


It's Always Snowy in Chaldea

by An_October_Daye



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/stay night (Visual Novel), Fate/stay night - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Fix Chaldea's Coffee Maker, Friendsert, Gen, Give Dr. Roman a Hug, Group Self-Insert, Lewds Delayed by Plot, M/M, Multi, Other, Self-Insert, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:42:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_October_Daye/pseuds/An_October_Daye
Summary: “-In any case,” Adam said. “Here’s our situation as I understand it. I’m not going to use any jargon because frankly, I don’t remember any.” He took another deep breath, as much to steady himself for what was to come as to make sure he wouldn’t run out.“We’re in that damn lootbox game you keep playing-”“FGO-”“And we have to reverse Carmen Sandiego all over everywhere by finding the actual factual Holy Grail-”“Not actually the Holy Grail; we’re looking for lesser grails that-”“And we do this by using our magical tattoos-”“Command Seals-”Dory aggressively made a ‘time-out’ T in Toby’s direction. “Ey! Let him finish.”There was a moment of silence, broken only by Ko and Spencer’s muffled laughter. Ritz and Mash looked horrified, for some reason.
Relationships: Fujimaru Ritsuka/Mash Kyrielight | Shielder
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	1. Okeanos | Chapter I

**Okeanos | Chapter I**

* * *

_**Adam/industrious** _

The island was a beautiful impossibility. 

A lush, tropical paradise the size of a stadium, with pale beaches and palm trees swaying in the slight breeze. The steady waves of the ocean crashed against the shore in familiar, hypnotic motion, darkening the sand to a muddy brown that faded in a steady gradient to mustard yellow.

Adam traced the course of the latest wave, trying to drown his beating heart with the rush of the waters. He caught sight of a small crab approaching his booted foot; the sand he stood on was loose and dry and had swallowed his shoe just past the sole. But as his eyes followed the tracks marking the creature’s path, he saw yet another pillar jutting half-buried by the tide, and felt his heart race just a little more, the small progress he’d made washing away like the very waves with which he had tried to calm himself.

White marble, some part of him noted, with the fluted column and Ionic capstone that had always reminded him of an unfurling scroll. The stone was old - far too old to be some mad developers’ work or a mere homage to the ancient days. The island was littered with similar Greek ruins - frescos and marbles depicting stories he had eagerly devoured as a boy.

And yet the sun (provided he didn’t look too closely at the sky) and the palms and sand all spoke of the Caribbean. Impossible.

It was, unfortunately, by far the smallest impossibility he had encountered in the last day. And yet it felt more real, more tangible than any of the literal magics or hurriedly rushed explanations that he’d already undergone.

Taking another deep breath, Adam forced himself to stare at the column. To fix it in his mind and accept the reality of it. He had already blocked out most of the sound around him, focusing on the water and the waves over the arguments and discussions of his companions.

“This is real,” he said to himself. “This is happening. I can do this.” Near the pillar, a chipped bit of marble bore an intricate carving of a serpentine head. He inhaled slowly, counting to five as he did so, and puffing out his cheeks, exhaled nine. “I [i]can[/i] do this.”

His heart rate finally returned to a normal state, and with steady, deliberate slowness, he turned his back upon the endless ocean, and strode back to the tiled ruin where his friends still stood.

“Sorry,” he called out, when he was close enough that he didn’t have to shout to be heard. The four people he knew were still in discussion with the two he didn’t, and he had no wish to interrupt. “I just… it’s a lot.”

“You holdin’ up okay?” Dory called out. The man had grown a beard since Adam had last seen him, short brown hair peppered with a bit of grey; he wasn’t even the oldest one present. 

“It’s weird,” he said by way of answer, accepting a peck from his fiancee as he rejoined the group. “It has to be like 90 degrees, but I’m not even sweating in this,” he gestured at the uniform all but one of them wore - a white tunic with a black strap just below the shoulders and a belt at the waist, black trousers, and boots.

“The fabric has some basic magic worked into it that keeps a constant temperature inside of it. It’s not all powerful, but it’s pretty effective,” the young man to whom his friends were deferring said. Adam had tried to memorize his name, but he’d never been great with names even under normal circumstances. [i]Ritz,[/i] he thought. [i]Like the cracker.[/i]

“Anything you need us to go over again?” Dory asked. “It’s a lot at once, but…”

Adam shook his head. “I’ve got the basics down, I think. Just… needed to process.”

Ko let out a sarcastic hum, even as she rested her arm against his shoulder. He reached for her hand, intertwining their fingers. “Oh this is gonna be good. Go on, tell us one of your cracky tales.”

“Thanks, darling,” Adam responded, matching her playful tone exactly. “Such confidence. Very wow.”

“Quit the damn memeing,” Toby interjected, his arms crossed, pushing his glasses further up his scowling face. “The very survival-”

Adam and Dory both held up a hand, before the latter deferred to the former. “I can summarize, Toby,” Adam said, his words quick, trying to disrupt the other man’s rant. Toby had been the most… passionate of them, since getting here. According to one of the… apparitions (he wasn’t going to call them “Servants” - that was just a godawful term), he’d tried to destroy his impromptu holding cell.

And in any case, Toby’s last attempt at an explanation had involved enough Inside Baseball that the others had practically fallen over themselves to clarify every other sentence.

“Excuse me, Adam-san,” the pink-haired woman asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. Her name, at least, he could remember - Mash. Hard to forget, especially given the weird fetish armor and strangely practical-looking shield. She was also apparently naturally pink-haired, too - no sign of dyeing. Proof they really were in an anime. “But I thought his name was ‘Bennett.’”

“He likes his nicknames,” Toby muttered darkly. “This one’s mine, so you’ll just have to remember it.”

“...Isn’t Ben already a nickname?” Ritz murmured, and shook his head.

“-In any case,” Adam said. “Here’s our situation as I understand it. I’m not going to use any jargon because frankly, I don’t remember any.” He took another deep breath, as much to steady himself for what was to come as to make sure he wouldn’t run out.

“We’re in that damn lootbox game you keep playing-”

“FGO-”

“And we have to reverse Carmen Sandiego all over everywhere by finding the actual factual Holy Grail-”

“Not actually the Holy Grail; we’re looking for lesser grails that-”

“And we do this by using our magical tattoos-” 

“Command Seals-”

Dory aggressively made a ‘time-out’ T in Toby’s direction. “Ey! Let him finish.”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Ko and Spencer’s muffled laughter. Ritz and Mash looked horrified, for some reason.

“By using our magical tattoos,” Adam repeated for emphasis (and only a little out of spite), holding up his left hand. On the back of his palm, a sigil that looked like three nested triangles, their borders broken by six spiraled rays like a rifle barrel, glowed faintly red.

“To summon historical heroes to do the actual heavy lifting, since we don’t have the mana pools to do it properly.”

“It’s not a ‘mana pool’; it’s another nervous system that only exists in the sou–ow, damn it!” Toby rubbed his arm where Dory had taken the time to smack him, muttering curses at his companion.

“And we’re currently in the Age of Sail. With pirates.” Adam glared at the other man. “That cover everything?”

Dory let out a brief, nervous chuckle. “Pretty much.”

“There is [i]so much nuance[/i] missing here,” Toby ground out, “that you basically said ‘automobile’ and referenced a Prius to describe an RV. That’s how far off you got while still being [i] _technically[/i]_ accurate.”

“... so… yes, that’s everything relevant then.” 

The sound of Toby’s hand hitting his forehead was better than most music. Not all. But most. 

“It’s close enough for a rush job,” Dory sighed. “We can get more relevant details as we get to them. It’s a lot, and it’s convoluted.” He looked to Ritz for a moment, before glancing down at the fitbit-like watch on his wrist that they’d all been assigned. “Provided we’re close enough to a leyline to summon, we should probably get that done sooner rather than later.” 

Adam paused as something he hadn’t remembered occurred to him. “...Wait. How do we know which heroes to summon? And can I call dibs on anyone?” He didn’t have anyone in particular in mind, but given just a minute to think….

“Yes and no. Do you have something belonging to that hero, directly affected by that hero, or so tied to that hero that holding the object immediately brings _only_ that hero to mind?” Toby asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm. 

Well. Drat. Still though.

“Yes,” Adam’s reply matched Toby’s. “When we got [i]teleported through dimensions[/i] in our sleep, I just so happened to bring along [i]exactly[/i] just an artifact. I’ve got the… uh… thing…” he tried to think of a decent example, and frowned as his sarcastic jibe lost all momentum.

“Do you have your watch?” Ko asked consideringly. “If you focus on Einstein’s reaction to the Manhattan Project, you [i]might[/i] be able to get him. Might be a little too modern, but…” She trailed off as he raised a bare wrist and waggled it.

“There could be something in the supplies,” Adam pondered thoughtfully. 

“You mean the supplies that were already packed and ready to instantly head out, that were packed _before we even arrived in Chaldea_? Not fucking likely! Which means that congratulations!” Toby spread his arms wide. “We’re playing the Hero Lottery, which is a complete crapshoot! Unless you’re like me, and think that’s a _stupid_ idea, then look to this _awfully convenient_ mess of Grecian ruins near us. Not to mention that if memory serves, we’ll be finding…”

And then his high-strung friend went hard into inside baseball again. Maybe Toby would realize he stopped listening in five minutes, but whatever the game portrayed, their very presence meant things had changed. According to Spencer, they weren’t even supposed to have started on this island - things were already off-kilter. They were in a dynamic stochastic model and Toby was certain that things were static, despite all available evidence.

“Alright,” Spencer said, startling Adam by speaking up, “times up, let’s do this. I’m just gonna Leeroy Jenkins this and hope I don’t get someone evil.”

“-Yeah, no, fuck that have fun I’ll be right back.” Toby rattled off without even pausing for breath. And with that, Toby was off, running at a fairly decent clip towards another set of faux-Grecian marbles, further into the treeline.

“Damnit-! ” Dory hissed under his breath before nodding at the suddenly concerned Mash, “Don’t worry, I got him.” Quickly jogging after the man, he yelled, “Damnit Toby! I _know_ you’ve seen Jumanji-!”

Ko threw the two teenagers (because of course they were teenagers) an apologetic look. “Sorry, guys. I wish I could tell you we’re less neurotic when our lives aren’t at stake, but… that would be a lie.”

_“Don’t worry,”_ da Vinci’s (actually da Vinci! A trans da Vinci which… good for her?) voice came over the communications, though the audio quality was a bit crackly. _“You should have seen Nero. Trust me, even with all the other craziness you’ve brought? It’s all rather tame in comparison to her.”_

That… just raised further questions. But going down that rabbit hole wouldn’t do any good for the moment.

The cross-like shield Mash carried was set against the ground, and despite how delicate Mash seemed to be with the thing, Adam still felt the impact on the ruined floor tiles.

Reaching into his pocket, Spencer drew out a set of the cue cards they’d been given, adjusting his glasses as he did so. The long-haired man audibly gulped, shaking his head, before taking a deep breath. As he began the chant, Adam looked at the shield - with every line, it began to glow with a pink light, gaining in strength until the final, blazing crescendo, bright enough that Adam had to look away. It faded quickly, though Spencer still had his arm raised up to block the light.

Only when it had fully faded did the other man lower his hand, holding it where part of his tattoo had faded. He wobbled on his feet slightly before catching himself, then looked down at the person standing on the shield.

A small, middle-aged Chinese woman, her hair held in place by an elaborate jade-and-gold hairpin reminiscent of a crown, stepped off the shield and into the sand, a tiny monkey perched atop her shoulder and a dao at her hip. As the small animal looked around, chirping all the while, its tail curled around itself, hiding part of the intricate embroidery on the woman’s emerald green jacket, which was belted closely at the waist by yellow silk.

“Servant Rider, Ching Shih of the Red Flag Fleet,” she spoke with a quick, clipped voice. “I take it you’re my Master?”

“... if we could not use the word ‘master’ that would be great,” Spencer said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head and still looking unbalanced. “But otherwise yeah, sure, why not… I need to sit down.”

The pirate smirked up at him like the cat that ate the canary, the wrinkles around her eyes crinkling. “Of course, little brother. You need to keep your strength up for what’s ahead of us.”

“You… you did it.” Adam said dumbly, staring at Ching Shih and Spencer both. “It - you -”

“Motherfuckin’ [i]MADAME CHING?!”[/i] Ko erupted, whooping loudly and slapping Spencer on the back. “Fuck yes! Good on ya, Spence, we’re in a pirate AU with [i][b] ** _The_** [/b][/i] Pirate!” She turned to the apparition with a fiendish grin and bobbed in a half-bow. “Morning, ma’am. Glad to have you with us.”

Ching Shih’s smile matched Ko’s tooth for tooth, a gold-capped canine incisor glittering in the hot Caribbean sun. “Oho~? My legend is known in America too, is it?”

“Well, Canada, in my case, but-”

“I feel kinda nauseous. Is that normal?” Spencer asked, taking a seat on a nearby section of ruined wall, Ritz coming over to check on him as he did. Ko’s smile faded.

“Y’all right?” she asked.

“I felt that way after summoning Heracles for a bit,” the boy said, squeezing Spencer’s shoulder comfortingly. “It should pass.”

Concern for his friend warred with his own unease at the entire situation, and Adam forced himself to look away, taking a jerky step forward.

“I’ll go next,” he said. “Be- before I lose my nerve.”

His hands shaking, he brought out his own set of cue cards - he’d been too busy paying attention to what Spencer had done to actually hear the words the other man had used.

“Hee- Heed my words,” he began, standing before Mash’s shield. He squinted at the words, his trembling enough to blur the letters until he held them steady with both arms. He tried to project his voice, to force confidence into it. “My will creates your body.”

All the doubts and disbeliefs he’d held came rushing back. This was insane. Absolutely insane. It was impossible. 

But he’d seen Spencer do it already. He was already standing on an impossible island, and wearing clothes crafted by Leonardo da Vinci himself - herself? Herself.

“And your sword!” he all but shouted. “Creates my Destiny!”

Adam couldn’t help himself, and muttered “the pen is mightier,” before realizing what he’d done. Disrupted his own rhythm. 

Letting go with his right hand, he made an expansive gesture before the shield, a dramatic flourish from his brief time doing middle school drama. He’d never been a great actor, but the gesture felt right, at least. He angled his finger towards the sky, as if pointing out a particularly important factor during a seminar.

“I hereby swear,” Adam thought he was getting into the meter of it now, building up steam, the fingers holding the card rubbing together to keep the next lines at eye level. “That I shall be all the good in the world. That I shall defeat all the evil in the world.”

He’d never tried something that ambitious. He’d made it his life’s mission to try and diagnose a singular evil, in the faint hope that it would be repaired. This - everything he was doing, everything that they were going to be doing, was so much bigger than that now.

“Thou Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power,” Those words came easier, their meaning unknown but impressive sounding. His voice rose to a crescendo as he belted out the final phrase, the first command.

“Come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales!”

The brief silence as his words faded seemed to stretch for minutes, punctuated only by the rustle of wind through the palm trees. Adam’s knees were shaking - had nothing happened? Had he failed?

Almost in answer to his unspoken question, the red sigil on the hand pulsed red, heat rising from it with an almost burning intensity as the innermost triangular shape faded like a scar. The angular glyphs circumscribing the shield flared with verdigrisian light, a dim white pillar rising to envelop the shield’s center. Faster and faster they spun, the light brightening with each rotation, until it shone like a beacon, harsh and pure, too painful to look at directly. Adam covered his eyes, turning away but the light burned through closed lids, the man forced to stare at the brilliant red of his own illuminated blood vessels, his heart racing against his chest.

When the light finally faded, there was a portly man standing upon the cross-shaped shield. Standing head and shoulders above him, the gentleman looked down upon Adam with large, bulbous Tom Baker eyes, set within a full Stephen Fry face. A pale violet George Washington-esque coat draped his frame over an ivory shirt and orange-checkered vest, his hands loosely hanging at his side.

Adam’s brow furrowed, caught between awe and confusion at the result of his incantation. He’d done it - but who had he called from the vasty deep?

The spirit’s hands made a grasping motion, a perplexed look appearing on his face, as if he didn’t know what to do with them; he glanced downwards before a long, slim cane of pale wood shimmered into existence between hot-dog wide fingers. He smiled then, the expression as filled with delight as a child, before fumbling the object, the cane clattering upon the shield like a steel drum.

“Damn,” the man muttered in a rumbling Scottish accent before looking up once more. “Oh. Right. Hallo there!”

With all the deliberate speed of a man encountering a bear, and ignoring the voices behind him, Adam raised his hand and waved. “Hi?”

“Hallo!” the man repeated, more jovially, reaching down to pick up his cane. “I suppose you’ll be wanting me name then. Right then…” The man gave a little bow. “According to tradition, you may call me ‘Caster,’ but-”

‘Caster’ opened his mouth once again, but Adam was forced to turn around as Dory and Toby’s argument moved into all out shouting at the newcomer’s appearance.

“—know, the gacha sucks. Deal with it. We have to compatibility-summon and hope.” Dory said, his hand locked around Toby’s wrist, not quite dragging the other back towards the group, but only just. “Nothing you’ll find here is gonna be remotely specific enough for you to pinpoint someone useful anyways.” 

Apparently, the two had come back from their little expedition empty-handed.

“You want me to hope?” Toby practically shrieked, his face red. “To _hope_? You know what that kind of thinking gets you?! _This!_ ”

The last word was guttural; his finger shook so bad that Toby was pointing more in the general vicinity of Caster than at the man himself. He reached down and picked up what looked like half a coconut and proceeded to throw it off into the distance as hard as he could. And he kept doing that with anything he could pick up and was unfortunate enough to be near him.

* * *

_**Fujimaru Ritsuka** _

_“There’s a bit of a situation.”_

_Never great words to hear, especially given the stakes. But words Ritsuka had gotten used to hearing on a nearly-weekly basis. He looked up at Dr. Roman curiously, trying to judge the severity of this latest emergency._

_“We’ve discovered the next Singularity.”_

_Good. Also terrifying. But progress._

_“And, uh... there are five more Masters that arrived last night.”_

_Ritsuka straightened up in surprise. “What? You mean…?” A part of Ritsuka felt hopeful at this. Each of the Singularities he’d made it through thus far, it had felt like he was just… muddling along. Doing his level best to tread water and not screw things up for everyone. Yes, he’d heard from both the various Servants in those Singularities_ and _from Dr. Roman and da Vinci that he’d done well. But it didn’t change the fact that he still_ felt _like a failure, like the absolute last resort. Because he_ was _the last resort, and nothing he ever told himself was going to change that._

_Even so, he also couldn’t help the slight bit of resentment forming. It had been just him so far, and… it was horribly selfish of him to think this way, but he’d been enjoying the attention. Roman and da Vinci treated him like family at this point; they were the older siblings he’d never had. And his relationship with Mash… that one vexed him, and was tied up in all sorts of other confusing thoughts and emotions that he didn’t want to try and unpack right now._

_Ritsuka shook himself out of his thoughts. That didn’t matter right now; there were more important things to think about._

_The summary had been strange even by the standards of Chaldea. They’d literally appeared out of nothing in various bedrooms, just as confused as Romani and the more domestic Servants were, with information that Dr Roman seemed to think could only have been obtained via some level of Clairvoyance. After having been vetted by Emiya and the others, they were on the verge of deciding whether to trust them, when the next Singularity had been discovered._

_And now they had to be briefed alongside Mash and him._

_“Where are they?” Ritsuka asked._

_“One of the intact lounges,” Romani answered. “Come on, Mash will meet us there.”_

_Chaldea’s lounge areas, once cleared of debris following Lev’s initial sabotage, hewed strongly to the base’s overall ultra-modern design philosophy: the entire room felt like it had been assembled elsewhere, and then just slid into place. Low white coffee tables, white chaises and armchairs... all of which were somewhat lacking in cushioning, if Ritsuka was being completely honest. He’d caught Romani napping on one of the chaises a few times, and still wondered how he managed to get comfortable on it._

_Romani held up a hand to stop Ritsuka just outside the half-open sliding door to the lounge, cracked so they could see inside. Sure enough, as Romani said, there were five of them._

_Two of them sat next to each other on one of the chaises, their eyes closed, leaning against each other with hands clasped. The man was… Ritsuka wasn’t sure, actually. Indian? Filipino? Maybe Malaysian. He would be the first to admit he hadn’t seen enough people of other ethnicities in Japan to be able to tell them apart, so he had to fall back on what he did know: the man was Asian, and he wasn’t Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. The woman was white, an incredibly pale brunette, with a strong jaw and sharply-defined cheekbones._

_Two more of their number stood together, and while they chatted amiably, he could see the tension in how they carried themselves. One of them, a man with graying brown hair and a well-trimmed beard… Ritsuka got the feeling that he had something he wanted or needed to be_ doing _right now, and that standing and waiting for something to happen was murder on him. His companion was a scruffy, square-framed brunet, with glasses and an outgrown mane of shaggy, sleep-tousled hair. He looked a little weak at the knees, and only half from nerves. The other half Ritsuka couldn’t be sure of, but it looked an awful lot like excitement._

_The last of their number also wasn’t alone, though his company wasn’t human. The bespectacled man, who Ritsuka could only describe as mousey, was cooing and fussing over… a dog. A small dog, sitting in his arms, and tilting its head up to lick at either his glasses or at—_

_“What is Boudica-san doing here?” Ritsuka whispered to Romani, who gave him a raised eyebrow._

_“She found the dog.” Ritsuka quirked an eyebrow of his own in response and looked back inside the room. He had to admit, he wasn’t actually that surprised at Boudica’s reaction. It_ was _a cute dog._

_“What can you tell me before I go in there?” he asked Romani._

_“The two sitting down,” Romani pointed at the couple. “Engaged. His name is Adam. She only gave what I assume to be a pseudonym. Said to call her Ko.” Ritsuka shot the doctor a flabbergasted look. “I know. Anyways. Beard is Jacob. Needs a haircut is Spencer. The one with the dog is Bennett.”_

_“Okay,” Ritsuka said, pointing from left to right. “Adam, Ko, Jacob, Spencer, Bennett.”_

_“Adam knows_ nothing _about Chaldea, or the Moonlit World in general,” Romani continued. “The rest all do, in varying amounts. Jacob and ‘Ko’ are versed in the basics. Spencer is working off more in-depth knowledge. And Bennett…” Romani grimaced as he trailed off. “We’re hoping at least_ some _of what he said is wrong. So far, it’s not looking likely. Which is_ mostly _a bad thing.”_

_Ritsuka struggled to imagine something worse than their current circumstances; it wasn’t as if the Incineration of Humanity left them much else to lose. What, were there going to be even more Singularities than the seven Lev had mentioned?_

_At least most of them knew more than he had at the beginning - he’d applied for the internship because the stipend would have more than covered his tuition, and they’d paid 5000 yen for the blood test. Even a basic knowledge of magic or Chaldea put them at a similar level to the proper masters that had arrived before him._

_“What about where they came from?” Ritsuka asked. “I thought the rest of the world outside Chaldea was, well-”_

_“We don’t know,” Romani interrupted. “That’s a problem for another day. Right now, we have a Singularity to solve, and the fortune of five more Masters to throw at it. And to be honest… I’d sleep better knowing it’s not just you and Mash on your own out there.”_

_Or maybe they could go instead and give Mash a break. The bitter thought crossed his mind for just an instant before Ritsuka shook his head to dispel the crazy thought. It wasn’t fair to expect that of them. He could barely believe the thought crossed his mind at all. All there was to do was take this in stride and accept having new coworkers in the field._

_“... right.” Ritsuka took a deep breath, held it for a count of three, then let it out in a deep sigh. “Alright. Wish me luck!” With that, he stood, pushed the door open the rest of the way—_

_“-and that’s when I told him, that_ is _the horse you rode in on!”_

_Um. What in the world was he walking in on?_

_“I hope it’s not a bad time?” He stepped into the room, fully aware of all the eyes on him. He parsed confusion, realization, and… respect?_

_That last one left him warm in ways he wasn’t sure how to fully describe._

_“Master!” Boudica gestured for him to go over towards her. “Come pet the dog!” Even as Boudica said that, her fingers never left the dog’s cheek, and the animal was trying to angle its head to lick her fingers even while Boudica scratched her cheek._

_“The dog’s name is Jamaica,” the man holding her said, before passing the dog to Boudica and walking up to Ritsuka. It hadn’t been obvious from a distance, but he was just_ barely _taller than this other man. “You must be the Master of Chaldea.”_

_“Ah, yes!” Ritsuka replied,_ very _thankful that he was probably the best student in his year for English. He’d probably need to start wearing a translation talisman around Chaldea, though; da Vinci-chan sometimes forgot that not_ every _human was a polyglot. “Ritsuka Fujimaru. It is a pleasure to meet you. Um, did the dog arrive with you?”_

_“Near as we can tell, we showed up with what was on our beds,” the one with the beard said, bowing slightly, “My cat, Ron is somewhere in the base, he showed up with me. Please keep an eye out for a fat orange tabby.”_

_“You are… Jacob, yes?” At the nod, Ritsuka let out a slight sigh, both of relief and frustration. “My apologies, but I have not heard anything.”_

_Jacob sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Entirely fair; thank you, though.”_

_“Again, my apologies,” Ritsuka said with a bow, drawing on every second of his many, many hours of experience working retail. “In the meantime though, we should become familiar with each other?”_

_“Then introductions I guess.” Bennett, whose dog was once again firmly in his arms, used the animal’s snout to point at his other companions. “The two who wish they had time to get a room are Adam and Ko. And the one who thinks a mule is a horse is Spencer.”_

_“Okay, I_ know _you still heard me say the rest!” the shaggy-haired one retorted with an indignant shrug and an outstretched hand._

_“He didn’t,” Bennett said, nodding towards Ritsuka. Wait, thinks a mule is—ooh,_ that _was what he meant by that bit, it was the punch line to a joke! Okay, Ritsuka saw what was going on there._

_English was hard._

_“It is a pleasure to make everyone’s acquaintance,” Ritsuka said to them with a bow. “Where are all of you from, by chance?”_

_“I’m Canadian; they’re all yanks,” Ko said with a soft smile and a stretch, putting a hand on her fiance’s shoulder and shaking him gently awake. “Ah- Americans, that is,” she clarified, looking back at Ritsuka apologetically._

_“I resemble that remark,” Bennett said._

_“-wasn’t asleep no evidence how dare you,” the formerly slumbering man mumbled without a pause, before his eyes focused on Ritsuka and he raised a hand in greeting. “...Hey. ’M Adam.”_

_“Hello. Um... is the word not ‘resent’?” Ritsuka asked, glancing back at Bennett._

_“Ah, no. Toby’s agreeing with her,” Adam said, his words still slightly slurred. “Don’t worry about it.”_

_“I see? I think?” Ritsuka gave a self-deprecating chuckle, a hand coming up to brush at the back of his head. So wait, which was it, Toby or Bennett? “My apologies, most of my work with English is from tourists. A normal conversation is a bit more hard.”_

_A knock at the door to the lounge interrupted whatever was to be said next, and Ritsuka turned to see Mash standing in the half-open door._

_“Ano, Dr. Roman mentioned that one of the new Masters was looking for his cat?”_

_“Oh thank goodness, you’ve found him?” Ritsuka blinked twice before taking a few steps back, shocked by just how quickly Jacob had moved from his prior position towards the door._

_“Yes, but—eep!” Mash was bumped to the side a moment after she entered the room, as Heracles nudged her out of the way so he could kneel under the doorway. The Berserker stood to his full height, staring at the five new Master candidates, all of whom had frozen at the sight of him. A moment later, he brought a massive hand to the back of his head, and sent his fingers questing through the veritable mane of hair he had back there._

_His hand emerged a moment later, with what could only be a cat cradled gently in the palm of his massive hand, which he extended towards the group._

_Heracles rumbled as Jacob laughed quietly, crossing the remaining distance quickly to pick up the orange, Garfield-like lump of a cat, crooning at it as he scratched its ears. “Thank you.” The cat was pulled into the man’s arms and cradled like a baby, immediately grabbing its owner’s forearm and proceeding to lick it._

_A lot._

_“Oh my god,_ we have a Lurch.” _Adam sounded almost in awe. Heracles let out a low grumble that Ritsuka could tell was more befuddlement than anything else._

_“We don’t, Fujimaru-kun does,” Ko murmured._

_“...Indy,” Spencer said quietly and slowly, eyes wide; Ritsuka was not clear at first who he was referring to. “Ko. Please. Do not. Mock Heracles. While_ I _am in a ten mile radius. It’s not a safe distance, but at least I’ll have time to pray to whichever god I decide on before we all_ die _.”_

_Well, Ritsuka thought, even if their common sense was more comparable to that of Liz or Nero’s, at least it seemed like they all knew how to keep level heads in a crisis?_

Now, watching them squabble and panic infinitely worse than he had in that ashen Fuyuki, Ritsuka wanted to kick his past self for his optimism.

* * *

_**Bennett/October** _

It was one thing to endlessly throw Saint Quartz into the gacha machine and hope for the rainbow orbs. It was something else entirely to go into the gacha, and know that your life—and maybe _every other life ever_ —hinged on a literal cosmic lottery. So far, they’d gotten a possibly-strong, but unproven Rider… and a semi-modern Caster. A man who he could see sitting in a parlour, sipping at absinthe with a pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose. Too old to have done something truly incredible or marvelous to earn his place… too _young_ to have gotten there by dint of raw power. In other words?

A _thoroughly useless_ Caster. 

Maybe this next one...

Dory did his best to wipe the blood from the corner of his eye; whomever he had pulled, just summoning them had made the veins on his arm and neck bulge and gotten pained noises from him through the summoning itself. The mere fact that he couldn’t recognize the individual was a sign that-

-something. It meant something. Wait, there was something. They’d said Saber. Okay, he could work with this. Saber, recognizable, but—nothing.

The Saber had announced… um. _Their_ class, only to cut themself off when Dory staggered. He’d waved it off though, and asked the Servant to dematerialize, make the load easier. Before then, he’d gotten a good look at the Servant, and it had been… it wore… it...

Dammit. He tried to think about who could do that sort of thing, but found he couldn’t even remember one of them. Worse, though; he _knew_ , deep in his bones, that there were _at least two_ … and try as he might, their _names_ eluded him. Even with his memory and knowledge, there were so many that _could_ have it that he didn’t, _couldn’t_ know about-! Who knew, it could even be like when...someone pretended to be… someone else-!

Agh! No, not worth it. This was a waste of time, energy, and the most precious resource of all: _time_. There were better things he could be thinking about.

Ko was approaching the shield, now, looking almost as worried as he felt. Adam gave her an encouraging grin and two thumbs up - and, of course, the Ye Olde Englishe fop next to him just [i] _had_ [/i] to mimic him. This. This is _exactly_ why he didn’t want to have to summon blind. Yes, there were good results, like a Saber that was so strong they were painful to sustain. The mostly-faded Command Seals on Dory’s hand were a testament to just how _lucky_ he’d gotten.

And that was the crux of the issue. _He got lucky_. Because Sturgeon’s Law was explicit: ninety percent of everything, _everything_ , is _shit_. Dory had gotten lucky and hit the ten. And then there was Adam and his utter fucking _nobody_ , standing there, not even _trying_ to understand what was happening, making flippant little remarks when it was _literally_ life or death that he actually try and _get this_ , and then proceeding to go and bungle his _one chance_ to get out ahead of this mess. 

Which was _exactly_ what he’d wanted to prevent! Even as Ko prepared to summon, he thought to himself. He couldn’t get a catalyst, that was out of the question. There _had_ to be an answer though, some way to keep this whole thing from being the real world equivalent of getting nothing but Black Keys, Mapo Tofu, shirtless Kirei, and a Saber Gilles... but for _keeps_. 

“Ye first, o silver, o iron… o stone of the foundation, o archduke of the covenant. Hear me, in the name of our great ancestor! Let the descending winds be as a wall...”

Hang on. The words she was saying… right, right. There was more than one way to translate the summoning aria, and the differences didn’t really make a difference. Kiritsugu was right when he said the aria was unimportant.

Except.

Except for the exception. Except for the additional lines that can constrain the summons, filter out the results. The extra lines that could _guarantee_ that you only get a Berserker. They couldn’t be the _only_ ones, he realized. There had to be more than just that, put in there by the original three families to game the system in their favor. Logically speaking, there _had_ to be six more.

And if there were another six?... that might work. A Hail Mary, yes. But maybe—

“... and be thou the hands that protect the balance!”

A flash of light pulled him from his musings, and he returned his attention to the summoning circle. As the light died down, he saw the Servant that Ko had brought forth… and felt the final dregs of hope drain away with it.

“Savior of Erin, lord of the renowned Fianna, granted victory by Nuada! Fionn mac Cumhaill! … has arrived.”

… no. No, no, this was—

The tall spearman took a goo-goo-eyed Ko by her still-outstretched hand, and brushed a kiss against her knuckles. “I’ll be counting on you, Master.”

“Likewise, ya flash bastard! C’mere!” And without another word, she pulled him into a hug, slapping him hard on the back and laughing.

_Damn it!_

A Lancer was good. The Knight classes were all strong, just by default; even the _weakest_ Saber was still going to be useful in a fight because _Saber_. But of all the _possible_ Lancers to summon? All the potential ‘I win’ buttons available in that class?

She had to get _Blondie McSpook!?_

God. Fucking. _Damn it!_

“I _said_ we should have used catalysts,” he ground out, addressing nobody in particular; Ko and Indy certainly weren’t listening, they were chirping at one another about the chaff they’d managed to pull. “But _no_. We had to go and roll the _fucking_ dice, didn’t we!” He kicked a coconut laying on the ground, watching it roll down the beach and into the sea. “I wanted a catalyst. I _could_ try to refuse and not do my summoning yet, but something tells me that’s not an option!”

“Oh, sure it is,” Dory started with a cheer, “if you can get your card to not be rejected from Catalysts-R-Us in McDoesn’tExist, Nowheresville.”

“Dory-” Ko said warningly.

“You have _no_ excuse to be making light of this situation!” Bennett yelled, rounding on him. “You rolled the gacha and got _lucky_!”

“A). Don’t _feel_ lucky.” Dory pointed at the still smeared blood on his face, before ticking off a second finger. “B? The Perfect is the Enemy of the _getting stuff done_.”

“I think I did pretty well for my first time,” Indy muttered darkly.

“Indy?” Bennett looked in his friend’s direction, dismissing the movement he saw out of the corner of his eye. “Let me spell this out for you: until you can listen to everything I say and not _wimp out_ , _you don’t get a vote_. Your opinion has less value than –”

“Toby-!” Dory snapped, grabbing him by the shoulders; his grip grew stronger the longer he held on, the man’s fingers digging into his collarbone - but underneath that was a rough tremble in his hands. “ **Stop.** Breathe and stop. Tell me, do you have an alternative to this? If you-ough-!” 

His words were cut off by a sudden coughing fit, harsh and wet as he swayed, desperately covering his mouth. Ritsuka leaned forward to grab him, only an instant too late before the armored figure reappeared in a flash of light, catching him before he fell.

“Fionn?” Ko asked. Before she’d finished the word, her Servant was already unhooking the waterskin that hung from his belt behind him and carrying it over to Saber and their Master.

“Just my luck to get summoned as a Lancer again,” he mused, crouching beside them. “Were I in the Caster container… ah, it’s a shame.”

“A shame what?” Saber half growled, facing their fellow Servant.

Even now, staring directly at the Saber, hearing their voice, Bennett couldn’t place it. Whenever his eyes went to try and land on a recognizable physical characteristic, they just _slid_ off. Try as he might, he _could not_ fix any details of the Servant into his mind. Which made it easier to pay attention to what _actually_ mattered here: his friend.

Who was definitely _not_ in great shape.

“A shame,” Fionn said, popping the narrow lid off the skin and tipping it gently over his hand, “that I only have the water to work with. As I am now, I can only heal his physical wounds; dealing with their source is another matter. There, now,” he added, holding his cupped palm up to Dory’s lips. “Drink.”

The already pale-skinned man now had even less color than he had had before, the blood still drying on his cheek. Splotches of faint bruising were starting to appear along the parts of skin not covered by his own uniform as Dory coughed into his hand.

With only mild hesitation, the bearded man struggled past the hacking to slurp up the liquid.

For a moment, nothing seemed to be happening. Then, with a warbling phlegmy noise, Dory spat a thick, red-brown wad onto the tile and sand beneath him before taking a slow breath, a trace of color returning to his face. Holding on to Saber’s shoulder and looking back and forth between the two Servants, he nodded. “Thank you.” 

As Saber got him back on his feet, he looked back at Toby, breathing carefully, “Look. If you have a better option. Go for it. But don’t take it out on us. Not for humor, not for Adam being out of his depth. Okay?”

“I… okay.” Bennett turned and paced, running his fingers through his hair. “I might. Have a plan, I mean. It’s not a catalyst, I can’t get that, but it’s _something_.” 

“And [i]I[/i] am going to sit back down then.” Leaning on Saber, Dory shuffled over to a spot by Spence on the crumbled wall and took a seat beside him.

“Okay. You do that.” Toby took deep breaths and turned towards Mash’s waiting shield, still set up as a summoning circle. “Alright. You can do this. It’s just gonna be… right, just… gotta do it.”

He stood before the circle and extended the hand engraved with Command Spells. He took a deep breath to compose himself, breathed out slowly… and began.

“Silver and iron to the origin,” he began. “Gemstone and the archduke of contracts for the foundation. Let tribute be paid to the great ancestor.” 

The glyphs upon the shield illuminated, pulsing a soft, arctic blue, interspersed with warm, vivid red.

More than any of them, he knew what risks they would face. There was the future to think about, yes. The next four Singularities had their own threats, challenges to be overcome, hurdles to climb. But none of that mattered if they died here. 

None of that mattered if they died to Heracles. 

“The alighted wind becomes a wall. The gates in the four directions close, coming from the crown, the three-forked road that leads to the kingdom circulates. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Repeat five times. Once filled, simply shatter.”

From the center of the shield, orbs of alternating red and blue light emerged, and began to spin, brightness building as they went. So far, so good. The Command Spells _burned_ , a hot coal in the back of his hand. His hand shook from the effort, and his right eye began to blur from the pain.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have been concerned. But one thing was certain: his near-encyclopedic knowledge of the _exact_ events to come had been largely nullified by one simple fact. They were on an island, as opposed to a boat. Every other contrivance that led to Heracles laying hands upon the Ark of the Covenant? They could very well be dust in the wind. 

And that was a risk he couldn’t take. 

“I hereby declare: my will shall create your body, your sword shall create my fate. Abiding by the summons of the Holy Grail, if you accede to this compact, answer me. I shall be all that is good in the heavens. I shall embody all that is evil in the hells.” As the light built, he grit his teeth even harder, _hearing_ them grind against each other.

Even with how apparently powerful Dory’s Saber likely was, it would not be enough. Not to handle _Heracles_. Not to kill him twelve times, twelve different ways. Which meant they needed another option. To defeat one who had so fallen to insanity, they needed one immune to it, specifically meant to fight it. One who had stood atop the mountains of madness, had their mind opened to the truth of the universe, and kept their self. 

There was only one way to _guarantee_ that the mad hero fell. The time had come. He had one shot at this. If there was a modification to the aria for a Berserker, he could assume there was one for the others. And if he needed the anti-Berserker, there was no better starting place. He had to try. 

He had to. 

“But descend from those heavens obscured by reason. You, who stares ere long into the abyss; and I, who would guard from its endless embrace.”

An imperceptible _something_ shifted in the light as its hue darkened from blue and red to a ghastly purple. Where before it was bright and pure, now it was something… _other_. It left trails in the world, oil-slick stains in the air, as a pervading sense of _otherness_ filled the clearing. He could swear that there was a faint _voice_ on the wind, so quiet as to be ignored… and yet.

And yet he could sense it. He could _hear_ it, a soundless cry from the cosmos. 

“From the seven heavens, clad in three words of power, arrive from the ring of deterrence, O keeper of the balance—!”

The light flared. As the feeling of molten _magma_ coursed through his veins, and he had to close his eyes… he could swear he heard the sound of a great, ancient key, turning in a rusted lock. And out in the lightless reaches of space, where not even gods dared to tread, _It_ dreamt.

The light flared before dying down, and he got a look at his Servant.

She wore a voluminous black dress, simultaneously too baggy and too short for her frame, with… what was the word, petticoats? With visible petticoats underneath it. Her outfit was utterly festooned with bows, alternating orange and black, with a hat perched daintily on her head. And clutched under one arm, she carried a worn, well-loved stuffed bear.

Behind him, he could hear Indy’s wild, cackling laughter. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he imagined the finger on the monkey’s paw curling down. 

He had risked it all on a Foreigner. And he had succeeded. 

“Hello!” His Servant said. “I’m Abigail… Abigail Williams! I’m a For… um, Foreigner… and you’re my Master?”

Only… perhaps he had succeeded too well. Because despite the sudden _heat_ and nausea confirming just how _powerful_ his Servant was… he couldn’t. He _couldn’t_.

“... Ffffffffuuuuuuuummmmph!” He bit back the word that so _desperately_ wanted to escape, practically biting down on his fist to keep from saying it. His whole body shook and shuddered. He wasn’t going to say it. Not in front of a child. Don’t say it… don’t—

**_Fuck!_ **

* * *

**[[CASTER](https://i.imgur.com/H7fRhPn.png)]**

**[[RIDER](https://i.imgur.com/Eouz82M.png)]**


	2. Okeanos | Chapter II

**_Okeanos | Chapter II_**  
 ** _Furiko_**  
  
“So, I summoned the father of capitalism, and you summoned... a little girl.”  
  
Toby glared over his shoulder at them. "Adam, you seem to think we're freaked for the same reason. Let me clarify this right now, in terms I know you'll understand: this ‘little girl’ is a Cape, _if Capes were hooked up to Lovecraftian elder gods instead of Shards."_  
  
"...You still summoned a kid~"  
  
Furiko sighed, and trying to ignore her heartbeat burning in her forehead. Here they were, essentially ascended tourists, about to die protecting a version of human history they had absolutely nothing to do with, and her fiancé’s first instinct was to poke Toby like they were all back in DC, discussing the sequel trilogy over tikka masala. She saw Dory out of the corner of her eye trying to get to his feet to address the situation again, but the armoured figure behind him pushed him back down.  
  
The child under discussion was looking worriedly back and forth between the man who had summoned her, and the one grinning mirthlessly at him. Her grip on her teddy bear had tightened significantly since the words ‘elder gods’ had been uttered. Ko had never heard of the ‘Foreigner’ class before (or even the Shielder class, she thought, making a point of _not_ going back to gawking at the teenager with protagonist hair who somehow both was and was not a Servant), but she knew a potential tykebomb when she saw one.  
  
“Lovely?” she said softly, stroking Adam’s arm. “I know you’re stressed out, and I see why this is funny, but find another outlet.”  
  
“How am I the bad guy here?” Indy spread his hands incredulously, reaching one off in Toby’s direction as if exhibiting him to the public. “He gets on our case for getting a personal hero and someone whose name is literally the fucking coolest-"  
  
 _ **“Dude!”**_ she snapped at the same instant Professor Smith said “Steady on, now!”  
  
“What?” Indy blinked, and his shoulders slumped as he remembered the child present. “Oh, shi-”  
  
“-llaleigh?” Fionn inquired innocently, the barely-there edges of his astralized form rippling faintly like a mirage.  
  
Indy seized the lifeline at once. “Exactly. We did it, we got there, good work everyone.” He bobbed his head in Fionn’s general direction and mouthed a _thank you_.  
  
And to think she’d been worried they wouldn’t get along.  
  
Toby watched this exchange with the clear and focused desperation of a man with several things to say and no space in which to say them, only to freeze when his Servant tugged at his sleeve.  
  
"Um… Master?” All eyes turned towards the young girl, looking up at Toby with a wide, innocent gaze. “What means he by this word 'fucking'?"  
  
Ko couldn’t tell if the kid’s question was in earnest, or if she was just really keen to get the conversation off herself as soon as possible. Frankly, she wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest.  
  
In any case, there was an immediate silence among them, broken only by the beating of the waves on the shore and a barely-audible ‘oh no’ from Spencer, half-delighted and half-horrified. Indy had gone stonefaced, and was looking anywhere but at Abigail.  
  
“Yeeees, Master of Foreigner,” Ching Shih spoke up, a small, catlike smile on her face as she casually placed one hand on the hilt of her sword. “I would also like to hear the answer to this question.”  
  
Behind her on his perch, Rider’s Master had gone very still, looking between his Servant and the increasingly-pale Toby with a queasy smile.  
  
“Um…” Toby glanced from the Rider, to the Foreigner, to the rest of them, clearly weighing his options. “So, uh… first off: Abigail, is there _anything_ you can call me that isn’t ‘Master’?”  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, Ko spotted Mash and Fujimaru (Fujimaru Ritsuka or Ritsuka Fujimaru - suffering cats, two first names. She hoped to all the gods who’d listen this world wasn’t an Urobuchi joint) whispering together. Not for the first time since they’d arrived, she felt a stab of pity for the pair of them. Two teenagers vs the forces of evil, reduced to babysitting people half again their age.  
  
“Uh... “ Abigail pursed her lips, thinking. “Goodman, then? If it please you,” she added belatedly.  
  
That accent was something else. It had to be authentic, it was too wacky not to be; exactly the kind of thing suggested by the cadence of Shakespeare and Marlowe, almost Northern Irish by way of Jamaican.  
  
“Okay, that works, Goodman Toby or Goodman Bennett, your choice, um…” Ching Shih cleared her throat, and Toby visibly flinched at the sound. “Well, you see… that word, uh... how do I put it properly… well, the best way I can describe it, ehm… uh. Give me a moment?”  
  
Aaaand that was her cue.  
  
“Fuck is a word used by uncouth people like ourselves,” Furiko told the girl, ignoring an alarmed yelp from Mash, “to express frustration or bewilderment, or to punctuate-”  
  
Ching Shih raised a hand, and that was all the warning she got before she was decisively cut off. “We’re waiting, ‘Goodman’,” the pirate said, her eyes still on Toby.  
  
 _Well fuck you too, ya dragonlady stereotype,_ part of her thought nastily, stung at having an attempt at imparting useful knowledge thwarted. Indy patted her arm in comfort.  
  
 _< < I take it we’re backing the jittery one, if it comes to that?>>_ came Fionn’s voice in her mind. She chewed on her tongue; the telepathic connection was an aspect of the Servant-Master bond she hadn’t really thought about, before it’d intruded on her life a few minutes ago. She wasn’t quite sold on its usefulness outweighing the damned inconvenient paranoia it provoked in her. Bad enough she woke up this morning in Antarctica; now she couldn’t even be sure her thoughts were private? Hell, with him dematerialized like this she was in genuine danger of forgetting he was there at all, until he said something.  
  
 _< < Of course we are, he’s a noodle-armed lawyer and his servant’s a traumatized kid,>>_ she tried to send back. _< < Rider gonna go for it, you think?>>  
  
<< We’ll just have to see how he handles this, won’t we? I’ve seen Servants fall out with magi over less, >>_ he replied ambivalently. _< < But then, this isn’t a Grail War, and none of you are magi. >>  
  
<< Thank the gods.>>_  
  
“Holy—I, for the love of—give me a _moment_ , please!” Toby spluttered at each nearly-voiced expletive, and held up a hand to give himself some space.  
  
“Okay,” he said finally, taking a deep breath, barely able to look his Servant in the eye. “So, uh… the word ‘fucking’ is a derivative of the word ‘fuck’, which has a lot of meanings. There’s the _primary_ meaning, which is to reference intercourse in a vulgar fashion, but the more common way to use it is as… um. W-well, the best way is to consider it the curse word version of ‘very’, or a word used as an exclamation point, so if I said that this thing was ‘very hard’, then you’d replace the very, or if I want to emphasize something but don’t want to yell it, I can use the f-word and not have to yell, but the point comes across anyway. Or uh…” In frustration, he huffed hard through his nose. “Look - there are tons of ways to use the word, and all of them are rude, and shouldn’t be said if you have a more polite word to use, okay?”  
  
“... as you say, Goodman Toby,” Abigail said, nodding.  
  
Then she turned to face the woman threatening her Master, eyes frightened, jaw set.  
  
“... Pong,” the pirate queen said at last, all but swallowing the dipthong at the end. Indy made a small choking sound of surprise as Rider removed her hand from the sword-hilt and turned back to face a still-sickly Spencer with a smile. “We should set sail soon, little brother; the tide is turning and there’s a fair wind.”  
  
 _… oh._ Ko remembered belatedly, feeling like an idiot. _Right. Madame Ching started her career as a prostitute._ Of _course_ she’d want to know why a strange man who’d done nothing but rant and rave since she arrived would intentionally summon a young girl. Man, that was super fucking weird, having to think about people right here and now as historical figures she already half-knew.  
  
“You’d know more about it than I would,” Spencer said, quickly nodding and turning to the group as a whole. “If she says we should go, we should probably go.”  
  
“Great!” Indy said cheerfully. “Where are we going?”  
  
“One moment please!” Mash objected, projecting her voice with far more force than Ko (or Toby, or Ching Shih, from the looks on their faces as they turned to look at her) had initially thought her capable of. “Senpai still needs to summon.”  
  
“But…” Indy blinked several times, his fingers flicking confusedly between Mash and her master. “Aren’t… isn’t… I mean….”  
  
Ko sighed. All those years trying to get him to watch Fate, and they ended up in one of the refractions of the Kaleidoscope she knew next to nothing about.  
  
“He’s the Master of Chaldea, lovely,” she explained, trying not to sound too cranky. “The system is set up to let him support more than one person at a time.” Some-fucking-how.  
  
“And thank goodness for that!” Toby sing-songed, and she had to suppress a groan. “Because unfortunately, our combat capability is a _little_ lower than it could _and should_ have been. And let’s not forget: we’re up against _infinite pirates_ , pirates as _far_ as the eye can see, pirates _literally_ crawling out of the woodwork! All of this before we even _begin_ to get to the _Argonauts_ dropping in to say hi!”  
  
 _< < And we’re back to this, I see,>>_ Fionn commented. _< < Does he only know one song?>>  
  
<< Go easy, >>_ Furiko chided him. _< < None of us volunteered for this.>>_  
  
“Toby,” she tried to break in, reaching for the man’s shoulder as gently as she could, “Toby, Toby? That’s enough. You’ve made your point, now you’re just scaring everyone-”  
  
“Oh, I’m _scaring_ everyone? Good!” he spat, shaking her off. “Let’s be real, we all _should_ be scared! We are a bunch of regular, squishy humans with no combat experience who all worked civilian jobs, and we’re about to fight _infinite pirates_ , beasties out of myth, and of course the _Argonauts_! You know, a literal who’s who of heroes from Greek myth, even more so than the Trojan War?”  
  
“Well,” Mash piped up with an attempt at a reassuring smile, “given you have your friends with you and seem to know what we’re up against-?”  
  
Toby whirled on her, and the look on his face made Ko’s insides twist.  
  
 _< < Fionn if he touches her you knock him the fuck out.>>_  
  
 _< < Understood, Master.>>_ The Lancer’s tone was just dark enough to be comforting.  
  
“Were you even _listening_? We are up against _Heracles_ ,” Toby nearly hissed in the pink-haired girl’s face. “And I would oh so dearly _love_ to know what you have planned for him, especially since you wouldn’t even go _near_ him in Fuy—”  
  
 _*crack*_  
  
The sound of the slap echoing across the beach was quickly followed by the much-more muted sound of Toby’s ass hitting the sand at Ritsuka’s feet.  
  
“Goodman-!” Abigail’s rush to her Master’s side was gently halted by the timely intervention of Professor Smith, who murmured something to the girl as he put a hand on her shoulder. She frowned up at him, and turned her attention back to Toby, but she didn’t pull away.  
  
Chaldea’s Last Master knelt in the tile and sands beside the fallen nerd, and lifted him into a sitting position by his collar.  
  
“Mister Bennett.” The young man’s nose and those alarmingly blue eyes were inches from Toby’s own, his voice far lower and harder than before. “If this is the class of help I can expect from you, it would’ve been better for you to stay in Chaldea.”  
  
The blood drained from Toby’s face, save for the angry red mark where Fujimaru had struck him. His jaw and neck trembled as his fingers carved furrows into the sand beneath him. His eyes flicked away occasionally, looking to Abigail, or Indy - but without fail, they always returned to meet Fujimaru’s gaze.  
  
“If your clairvoyance has shown you _any_ of the previous Singularities, then you know that we have already borne the weight of humanity on our shoulders. And I will do so again here, with or without your help.” His tone softened. “There is no shame if you cannot.”  
  
Toby stared for a moment longer, his breath stabilizing as the anger in his eyes faded. Then he closed his eyes, and nudged Fujimaru with an open palm to the shoulder.  
  
Fujimaru let his hands fall, and took a step back to give the other man room to get up. But it quickly became clear that that hadn’t been what Toby’d had in mind; as he rolled over onto his knees, one hand went up to his mouth as his neck and chest spasmed in what turned out to be a thankfully-dry bout of retching.  
  
Ko winced, and looked away, her throat constricting as she repressed the sympathy pains. _< < And that makes four of us.>>  
  
<< So it does.>>_  
  
“Are you okay?” Fujimaru asked, and the whiplash of hearing him switch back to his usual gentle tone after that disturbingly-attractive hardass routine was almost more than her aching head could bear.  
  
“I—” Toby coughed, once or twice. “I… yeah, now I am. I think.” Fujimaru offered him a hand up, and Toby took it, regarding him with an odd look. “Damn. You really _are_ something else, aren’t you.”  
  
The kid didn’t seem to know how to take that. He looked to Mash, but the poor girl was too busy hiding a blush by avoiding eye contact to say anything.  
  
“ _... right_!” Dory broke the hanging silence with a clap. “ _So_ , we should probably finish summoning and move on to something more productive.”  
  
“Right.” Fujimaru nodded at Toby. “If I may?”  
  
“Uh… oh, right! Ah, yeah I—yeah.” Toby moved off to the side, and almost immediately Abigail was at his side, quietly slipping her hand into his.  
  
Fujimaru stepped up to the cruciform shield and launched into the simplified aria. _I miss my sunglasses,_ Ko thought pathetically as she looked away with what she hoped looked like casual disinterest; observing Abigail’s summoning directly had been like the worst brainfreeze she’d ever had. She was already dealing with brutal cramps and a headache, she didn’t need to be falling off her feet like the others.  
  
A moment later, she heard Fujimaru saying, “Good to see you, Tell-san.”  
  
“It is,” an older man replied as she turned back to squint at the new arrival. Blond, slightly-grown-out regulation haircut, round glasses, a close cropped beard, fatigues. And a cigarette, on which he took a lingering drag.  
  
“Clear skies, fair winds,” he added approvingly, after blowing a pair of smoke rings. “I wonder though, Master; who else shall join us on our hunt?”  
  
Fujimaru opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. He turned to Indy’s Servant. “Pardon me, Caster-san; may I ask your abilities in that class?”  
  
“... well...” Professor Smith hesitated, his prim Morningside accent doing nothing to dispel her initial impression of him as essentially a supportive father adrift at an anime convention. “I am afraid I must admit my uncertainty as to _why_ I was imported into this particular class. Though I confess, I know none which would better suit. I do apologize, everyone,” he added, those large, friendly-looking eyes turning nervously to each of them in turn, “and crave your indulgence - this is my first time ‘in the field’, as it were.”  
  
Magi, collectively uninterested in summoning a pseudo-Caster younger than the invention of the pocket watch? What a shock.  
  
 _Poor bastard,_ she thought, unsure whether she meant her fiancé or his Servant. Neither of them had the slightest idea what they were in for. She squeezed Indy’s hand, and felt him squeeze back as he turned to smile at her. _At least we’re a team._ For what felt like the fiftieth time in the past ten minutes, she thanked her lucky stars she’d managed to summon Facestabber mac Trollolol his own mad self. Talk about being loaded for bear. They just might get out of this in one piece.  
  
Fujimaru, understandably, took a moment to absorb Smith’s... entire deal, then nodded. “Right, not the oddest. Liz was weirder.”  
  
Huh. She would’ve thought she’d’ve heard if they’d released an Elizabeth Servant. A Caster, into the bargain? What, did she get packaged in with John Dee, somehow?  
  
Her musings were cut off by yet another flare of hatefully bright light, and when it faded, an all-too-familiar figure stepped down to greet the young man.  
  
“Yo, Master. Didja take attendance already?” he asked, his staff slung across his shoulders with his long-fingered hands hanging gently over it, his tattered sky-coloured cloak and dark blue hair falling behind him, his full-length gloves and strapless shirt shrink-wrapping his perfect musculature.  
  
 _< < The Hound of Ulster can be summoned as a Caster?!>>_ her Lancer asked, aghast.  
  
 _< < Yeah, because apparently ruining my life in just one class wasn’t enough for him,>>_ she replied before she could stop herself.  
  
Indy chuckled nervously under his breath, and slipped one arm around her. “Da boo dee da boo die...” he half-whispered, half-sung.  
  
 _< < ... oh, you poor woman,>>_ Fionn said finally, a worldly melancholy creeping into his voice. _< <Now I see why my radiance failed to dazzle you upon my arrival - your eyes have already been captured by the Child of Light.>>  
  
<< It is illegal to be that hot and I’m going to sue him,>>_ she thought petulantly. If her Servant was going to hear her leering at strangers, he might as well hear all of it.  
  
“Okay.” Dory started, blessedly drowning out whatever Fionn’s response to that was going to be, “With that thankfully done, we can focus on what’s next. What do we know and where do we have to go?”  
  
 _“Our sensors can’t extend too far away from the island itself, unfortunately,”_ Roman’s voice came over the wristbands they all wore.  
  
“Damn, that would’ve been helpful. Without that… hm. Alright, so.” Toby spoke up, massaging the bridge of his nose, his voice much more measured than before. “We still need to get going, so I’ll keep this _relatively_ short. Stop me if I go too deep?” He glanced at Indy, and when he got the nod of surrender, he continued.  
  
“The _original_ order went very, _very_ roughly as follows: get to Francis Drake’s ship. Beat Drake. Ask Drake for the Holy Grail. Realize it’s not the _right_ Holy Grail. Start searching for the one that _isn’t_ supposed to be here and actually caused the Singularity, and in the process find Blackbeard, who is _also_ looking for it - by the way, that’s going to _suck_.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Mash asked.  
  
“Show of hands,” Toby asked flatly, “who here knows the terms ‘neckbeard’ and ‘weeaboo’? Blackbeard is _that_ , but worse.”  
  
Indy made a polite noise. Furiko was tempted to ask if he meant ‘Sonichu’ worse or ‘war crime apologist’ worse, but decided they’d wasted enough time. Besides, she was a Fate fan - it wasn’t as though she had much room to talk.  
  
“Moving on… Blackbeard is working with Hektor of Troy and Jason. Of the Argonauts. You know, the A-Team of Ancient Greece?”  
  
She tried not to roll her eyes. _The A-Team. Without Theseus or Perseus or Odysseus. Sure, why not. Jesus wept, they couldn’t even keep their one genuine A-lister from fucking off in a huff when his boyfriend got kidnapped. Wait, Hektor wasn’t even born yet when Jason sailed for the Golden Fleece-_  
  
“That’s where the Grail is,” Toby continued. “Medea has it. As in: their _spellcaster_ has a vessel of _functionally infinite mana_. This is exactly as bad as it sounds.  
  
“So now here’s what we need to do, in _relative_ order, because it may change a bit.” He began counting off on his fingers. “Find Drake. Get Euryale, Asterios, Orion, and Artemis on our side - this is the easiest part, by the way. Find Blackbeard to find Hektor. Come up with some way to handle Heracles. Follow Hektor to Jason. _Hopefully_ find Atalanta and King David; Artemis should help with that. Gank Jason so we don’t fight more Argonauts. Gank Medea for the Grail.”  
  
He looked around. “Any questions?”  
  
“Why do we need to find Drake?” Indy had an eyebrow raised, but he appeared to have paid attention this time. “If his ‘Grail’ is a false lead. And do we need to engage with Blackbeard at all?”  
  
“Good question! To elaborate: there are two Holy Grails here,” Toby explained. “One of them is _supposed_ to be here. The other is _not_. The one that’s supposed to be here, the one Drake has? Just having it _nearby_ will likely make anything that _isn’t_ supposed to be here a little weaker. It’s also, again, a _Holy Grail_. Think of Field of Dreams: if you build it, they will come. Similar scenario here: if we _have_ it, they will come. Specifically, _Blackbeard_ will come, and we _want_ to engage him. That’s because finding him finds us Hektor, who finds us Jason, which means we won’t need to try and search the world’s biggest haystack for _another_ needle.”  
  
“... also we need circuits.” Dory tried for a grin, one hand pressed hard against his chest, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes.  
  
“Mm _hmm,_ ” Ko concurred, nodding vigorously with something approaching relief. Good ol’ Dory. If he was bothering to bring it up this early in the proceedings, there was a decent chance he already had at least one crackpot plan to solve the problem.  
  
Mash and Fujimaru locked eyes for a moment, but didn’t say anything out loud. She wondered briefly if they had a mindlink like the rest of the Servant-Master pairs, or just a strong rapport.  
  
“A grail should be able to help with that at very least,” Dory continued ( _oh, right, this is an Einzbern-Fuckup-Free timeline!_ ), “but it brings up a question of step one: Finding Drake.”  
  
“Which is… a problem,” Toby said. “There’s a hefty implication that originally, Drake’s Grail acted almost as a beacon for the Rayshift, and actively made it _super easy_ to get to her. We can assume that this still holds at least _somewhat_ true, but a ship’s deck wasn’t a big enough target for all seven of us. So there’s four possibilities: Drake is on the way here, Drake is sailing past here, Drake has just left here… or I’m completely wrong and Drake is _nowhere_ nearby.”  
  
 _< < … do we tell them now?>>_ Ko asked, not bothering to hide her smile.  
  
 _< < Patience~>>_ Fionn hummed. _< < Waiting for and recognizing the opportune moment is an essential skill for heroes and comedians alike.>>_  
  
“So…” Spencer was saying, “it means Drake… is somewhere… in the world… thank you for narrowing that down for us.” A moment later, he shook his head, shaggy hair flopping around his ears. “Sorry, that sounded meaner than I meant it to.”  
  
“How was she originally found?” Fujimaru asked.  
  
“Mash beat up a bunch of pirates, claimed leadership over them via right of conquest, took their ship as her spoils, and commanded them to take her to Pirate Island,” Spencer said with a nostalgic grin.  
  
Ching Shih nodded at the now beet-red Demi-Servant with genuine respect in her eyes, even as the girl covered her face with her hands.  
  
“Great.” Dory muttered before shaking his head. “That opens up some possibilities. Inventive naming aside, we ‘just’ need to find some pirates.”  
  
 _< < They haven’t noticed me smiling yet.>>  
  
<< You have my word, Master: the longer it takes them, the funnier it will be. >>_  
  
“They’re not hard to find,” Toby snarked. “This place has literally _infinite pirates_. We could shoot a cannonball into the open, empty ocean and probably hit _three separate pirate ships_.”  
  
“Little brother,” Ching Shih’s dry tone did nothing to hide the skepticism in her voice, “I would prefer to have a heading before setting sail upon strange waters. Let alone engaging in battle with an unknown foe.” Her eyes glanced meaningfully at Spence’s hand. “Unless you truly believe this to be the best course.”  
  
Spencer rubbed his temples. “I’m really noooot in any state to be making decisions right now. If all you need is a heading, we can at least pick a direction and head that way.”  
  
“That is not enough,” she declared, shaking her head. “The ocean is a vast and treacherous thing, and its depths are filled with the graves who traversed it lightly.”  
  
 _< < Now, Master.>>_  
  
“Gosh,” Ko said brightly, “seems like we’re in need of some intel. Show of hands, how many of your Servants have access to all the world’s wisdom as a secondary Noble Phantasm?”  
  
The silence that followed was broken almost immediately by a brief yelp of surprise from Fujimaru, followed by Indy letting out a soft, ominous chuckle.  
  
“... oh,” Spencer said flatly as Ko descended into delighted giggles. “So it’s like that, is it? Just, uh... just gonna let me sit here and squirm the whole time?” He didn’t keep up the facade for long; halfway through the sentence he was already smiling.  
  
“God. Damn it.” Toby reached a hand up and pushed his glasses aside, rubbing his eyes. “Of course. Of. _Course.”_  
  
At that point, Abigail tugged on his sleeve with a serious expression, and whispered something that had him instantly caving to her cuteness and apologizing, whereupon she nodded stoutly, and went back to swinging their clasped hands gently backward and forward.  
  
“Could’ve mentioned that before,” Dory opined, grinning as he flipped Ko off.  
  
“I assumed you knew,” Fionn said cheekily, materializing beside his Master and causing Indy to jump a little. “You’ve confidence enough in your own Clairvoyance, how could it fail to inform you of mine?”  
  
Smith tsked. Off behind Fujimaru, Caster Cu shook his head with a little laugh and softly declared, “Prick.”  
  
The brilliance of the sunlight off the waves was absolutely killing her, and she Did Not Care. She and Indy were laughing and holding one another, surrounded by friends and heroes, backed by bridge bunnies King Solomon and Leonardo da fucking Vinci, reincarnated as a ginger moe-blob and a bishoujo brunette respectively.  
  
... gods, if she could just _survive,_ everything else about this would be worth it.  
  
With much less fanfare than she’d expected, Fionn stuck his thumb in his mouth, casting a playful glance in her direction as his skin and hair started to sparkle with an inner light. She rolled her eyes. She didn’t know where he got off, feeling all offended at Diarmuid running off with his fiancée, if he was just going to make passes at- why was he frowning now?  
  
Out came the thumb. “Allegedly lovely one, attend to your lady - she’s about to be unwell.”  
  
Indy’s eyes narrowed at the Servant. “What-?”  
  
 _< <-the fuck?>>_ Her pulse pounded behind her eyes. _< <Did I or did I not tell you not to-?!>>  
  
<< I’m sorry, Master,>>_ Fionn said as the first of the bile hit the ground. Her hands and knees followed close behind, though thankfully she didn’t actually land _in_ her vomit.  
  
Indy swore as he knelt beside her, stroking her back. “Did everyone but me eat the salmon mousse?!” he demanded. “What the fuck is going on?” Ko felt a dry cloth rub against her cheek. “It’s okay,” he said, in that aggravatingly-calm tone he used when he was trying to be reassuring. “You’re safe. I’m right here…”  
  
“I’ll explain later, I promise,” she grunted, snatching the cloth and using it to wipe her lips, her cheeks hot with more than just a brewing fever. She pushed herself into a sitting position, dusted off her hands, and brought one of them up to cover her eyes with a deep breath. “Fionn, what’ve you got?”  
  
“Drake is currently at Pirate Island, and is stationary. The island is on a north-by-northeast heading from us, three days’ journey away with the current winds.”  
  
“Right,” she heard Madame Ching declare. “Fionn mac Cumhaill, I’m in need of a navigator. You’ll have a share and a half of all treasure taken and the right to transmit my orders to your Master.”  
  
“Two shares, and-”  
  
“Only the captain takes two shares,” she said matter-of-factly. “You aren’t a real sailor, big nose, don’t push your luck. One share and a half. You’ll take it.”  
  
 _“‘Big nose’-?!”_ Fionn squawked.  
  
“As for the rest of you Servants and Masters,” she went on, ignoring him, “I’ll grant you a special dispensation to pay off your passage as temporary crew. Little brother - you’re cargo, you’re with me.”  
  
There was a pause before Spencer spoke. “Context? Please?”  
  
“Personal property,” the pirate queen affirmed. “You’ll be no good to anyone as you are; best thing for you is to stay tucked in bed like a good boy so I can be sure of keeping us afloat.”  
  
“... I thought I was doing pretty well compared to Dory,” he said, flummoxed, his cheeks pinkening. “Is this for tax purposes? There’s no… authority… to collect? Question mark?”  
  
Ching Shih’s shrug was practically audible. “I am the authority.”  
  
“Yeah ok,” Spencer whispered, more than a little breathlessly.  
  
Behind her hand, Ko smiled. _Summoning a domme on the first roll. I can’t decide if that’s good luck or bad._  
  
Her smile was shaken by a sudden gasp as a rush of cold water suddenly surged up the beach and soaked into her pants. Getting to her feet (Fionn was kind enough to offer her a hand, which she gratefully took), she saw a multi-decked ship with red sails riding impossibly high on the waves not twenty feet from the shore, the displaced water still rolling away from it.  
  
Immediately, Spencer let out a low-pitched jumble of random syllables, and, limbs gone completely slack, he fell to the ground like a puppet - or at least, he would have, had Ching Shih not caught him beforehand. Cradling him in her arms like an overgrown infant, the petite Chinese woman nodded sagely.  
  
“Cargo,” she confirmed.


	3. Okeanos | Chapter III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting with this chapter on, updates shall be every Thursday, at approximately 5:00pm EST.

**_Adam//industrious_ **   
  


* * *

  
“How do most of you not have circuits?” Ritz demanded.  
  
They were having this meeting on the deck of Admiral Ching’s junk - if only because Toby had refused to abandon his solemn duty of feeding the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean. They’d set sail… maybe forty degrees of sunlight ago, and Toby had spent nearly all of that with his head and shoulders bent over one bucket or another, the little girl - Abigail, her name was Abigail - patting his back gently and occasionally swapping them out.  
  
The results of the brief period that he hadn’t had thankfully been cleaned up by one of the crew. The magical crew. Of the magical boat.  
  
“Because,” Dory started, massaging one of his hands with the other as he sat beside Toby, “to the best of our knowledge, we’re at best mundanes, at worst from a side of the kaleidoscope without magic.”  
  
Adam still did not know how he felt about the said magic business. On the one hand… _magic_. But on the other...everyone except him had gotten violently ill once they’d called their spirits from the Jungian void. Between Toby’s projectile vomiting, Spence needing to be physically carried to Ching Shih’s quarters, and Dory’s literal tears of blood, things were… not off to a good start. And while his fiancée was persisting in her claim that she was fine, everything was fine, she just had a migraine, he wasn’t completely blind. She was suffering at least as much as Toby was.  
  
It was a tricky balance, helping her. Too little and she’d be in pain; too much, and she’d think he was being condescending again. Which, to be fair, he had been. A number of times.  
  
Reaching out, Adam moved the palm of his hand over the back of the Ko’s neck, softly petting the area in short, almost brush-like motions. She made a small, sweet sound in the back of her throat, and tilted her head towards him. She was definitely in bad shape - under normal circumstances, she hated when he did that in public, even though it calmed her considerably.  
  
Toby opened his mouth, and began to chime in himself, but as the ship hit yet another wave, any explanation or clarification he had started was immediately replaced with yet more bile. Which was almost poetic, given how he’d been earlier.  
  
“... wait, _most_ of us?” Ko croaked belatedly, her head and body angled so that she was exposed to as little of the bright Caribbean sun as possible. If the situation weren’t this serious, he’d be cracking another joke about marrying a vampire.  
  
“We’re not detecting any magical signatures from you outside of the Command Seals, but while most of you are showing early signs of od depletion, Adam is doing markedly better than we’d expect, even with a weaker Servant.”  
  
In the background, Toby let out a low wailing sound.  
  
Adam, for his part, blinked, trying to cut through the jargon. And yet, while the idea that Smith was simply less powerful made some sense, Smith had also gone incorporeal pretty much the instant that Spence had keeled over. The Scot was considerate that way.  
  
Ritz nodded at Adam. “So, that’s why we think you have a few weak circuits.”  
  
“Or something similar,” Roman clarified. “We don’t know.”  
  
Adam raised his hand. “Sorry not sorry, but what the hell is a magic circuit?”  
  
“When King Solomon laid down the foundations of magecraft, he engraved Magic Circuits into the souls of the original 72 families,” da Vinci explained. “These circuits act as a metaphysical analogue of the nervous system, though they function more akin to the circulatory system than nerves. When you see Ritsuka use magecraft and see the circuit markings on his arm, those are just a representation of his circuits. They aren’t actually, physically _there_. So. ‘Indy.’ Tell me. Has anything ever happened, anything strange when you were scared? Or angry?”  
  
Da Vinci’s question raised her esteem considerably in Adam’s books. Closing his eyes, he took the time to ponder the answer, trying to dredge up any Harry Potterian coincidences associated with strong emotion-  
  
“He fucking doesn’t—!” Toby managed to yell before he burped, retched, and once more assumed the position.  
  
“Language, Goodman.” Ching Shih called from the wheel that they all were sitting behind. “Or that’s a flogging.”  
  
Adam chuckled nervously at her words - being part of her crew had involved signing onto her code. Said code had the death penalty for a surprisingly large number of offenses. Or perhaps, not so surprising.  
  
It was, it was, a glorious thing, to be a pirate queen.  
  
“It does seem unlikely, given what we know of our home,” Dory noted, continuing to rub Toby’s back. “But you guys are the experts.”  
  
“Based on the preliminary readings from Sheba,” Dr. Roman continued, presumably referring to some kind of scanning device, “we can estimate approximately how often you will each need to burn a Command Seal to sustain your Servant. This will also keep your depletion to a minimum. Ching Shih should require a Command Seal every twenty-two hours; Abigail every thirty hours; Finn every twenty.” He paused, the silence almost apologetic. “Jacob’s Saber will require one somewhere between eighteen and fifteen - but they should last the full day if they remain dematerialized or sleeping for the majority of the time. This holds for all of the other Servants as well.”  
  
“And Smith?” Adam was almost afraid to ask what would happen should a Command Seal not be available.  
  
“Three days at the usual rate-” it was da Vinci who replied, rather than Dr. Roman, “-but as you effectively seem to have some amount of Magic Circuits, closer to five.”  
  
Adam was acutely aware of the envious stares (and in Toby’s case, a single finger) levelled in his direction.  
  
“...So, we need to talk about what this means for when we get into combat.” Ritz noted, a shadow falling over his face. Mash, kneeling next to him, squeezed his hand lightly.  
  
The only actual competent summoner here had stationed his other two historical figures more tactically - William Tell (and Adam had to catch himself from humming the first few bars whenever he heard the man) was in the crow’s nest, while ‘Coo’ was at the bow, doing… something to the water ahead of them.  
  
A short bark of laughter escaped Dory, one hand immediately covering his mouth, before he shook his head, “Sorry, we might be able to jump in to end a fight going sideways, but ████ and I… if ███ fight, I could actually die. Last resort.”  
  
Wait, who was Dory referring to? He’d summoned a spirit, it was one of the combat-specialized classes, and….  
  
The realization, when it came, sent a bucket of ice water down his spine.  
  
Nobody was getting their bits inside his head. Nobody.  
  
“Dory.” he pointed a trembling finger at the man. “Get your… person… spirit… thing _out of my head_. Now.”  
  
The bearded man blinked in confusion, before a somewhat sad look washed over his face. Gently, he said, “I can’t, at this stage. It’s very specific, a way to keep people from knowing who ███ are, and while _I_ know, ███’ve made a good argument for keeping it secret. If it’s affecting you, I’m sorry; I’ll try to keep the stuff that’ll trigger it to a minimum.”  
  
“Lovely,” Ko said wearily, petting his shoulder, “just… trust me, it’s not a mind-reading, mind-wiping thing - you haven’t been Voidfish’d."  
  
Adam gave her a long-suffering look. “... Naruto, or Gundam?” he asked, a tinge of exasperation replacing his panic.  
  
“Adventure Zone,” she admitted, before elaborating: “There’re Servants that have the ‘mystery knight’ trope as a skill. I just can’t remember which ones, because…” Here she spread her hands helplessly. “Well, duh.”  
  
So magic actually could deal with second and higher order effects - that was definitely fascinating, and Indy had to wrestle down proposals for how to test the extent.  
  
“Got it,” he nodded. “Dory summoned Lyanna Stark.”  
  
“Not how it-!” Toby’s gasped response was cut short by a loud thump of Dory’s palm against his back and subsequent further retching noises. Abigail took the mostly full bucket and made her way carefully towards the railing, throwing the contents overboard.  
  
“It’ll clear up as soon as the Servant decides to reveal themself,” Ko concluded. “We’re not gonna suffer any long term brain damage.” She frowned, before lifting her wrist communicator to speak into it. “Oi, doc, does that still hold true for people without circuits? We don’t have that thing where we passively deflect other people’s mana, so…”  
  
“I don’t think that’s an issue?” Roman replied, though it was more question than answer. “It depends on the exact Heroic Spirit and mechanic of their skill or Noble Phantasm, but since most variants of magecraft that produce a similar effect don’t cause any brain damage outside of long-term, multi-year reapplication? I’m going to guess it’s probably safe, but I’ll keep a close watch on all of your vitals. Just in case!”  
  
“Thank you~!” Ko sing-songed weakly, before burying her face back in Adam’s shoulder.  
  
Dory looked off to the side before nodding, turning back to the group. “████ doesn’t think it should. ███’d be surprised if it actually had a permanent effect.”  
  
“I believe we’re getting off track.” Ritz spoke up before looking to Dory. “You won’t fight?”  
  
“Only as a last resort, until we can wish ourselves up some circuits. One command seal left.” Dory flexed his left hand, the red design on it reminiscent of a tree, with two swirling smudges on either side, staring down at it with a melancholy look before giving a wry smile, “And ████ takes one a day even while astral… ███ fight, I could be dead before I get another Seal. So unless we _have_ to, we’re sitting out. Sorry.”  
  
There wasn’t any disappointment on the Japanese boy’s face, just a resolute nod before he turned to Ko. “Your thoughts?”  
  
“Well Ishka Bayha doesn’t seem to cost much energy,” she remarked, leaving Adam to wonder what the hell the Irish Gaelic translated to. “Like, it didn’t noticeably make my headache any worse when Finn patched up Dory. It’s more skill than Phantasm, even if in the Lancer container it expresses itself that way. We were talking about it earlier, and we figure at the very least, we can do a bit of backline support work. As far as combat goes… personally, I don’t mind going full Dory _if_ it clinches the win, but ideally I’d like to hold off on using… was it Mac-Ann-Win?” she asked, turning to the spectral haze over her shoulder. A moment later she nodded, adding, “Okay. Sorry, myth’s a little different where we’re from.” With a heavy sigh, she turned back to face the rest of the group, wincing. “Yeeeah, his offensive NP is gonna hafta be a ‘the right attack in the right place’ kinda thing. If we spam it, Finn thinks I’m probably gonna have an aneurysm.”  
  
Adam made a worried sound in the back of his throat, and pulled Ko into a one-armed hug.  
  
“How about h-his telepathy skill?” He tried to go for a light tone, but the stutter that he’d locked away in his youth was already banging against the walls of its cage. “How expensive is that one?”  
  
She paused in the middle of reassuringly stroking his back, and looked up at him to raise an eyebrow. “... all Servants have send-and-receive telepathy, dear.”  
  
<... oh.> Professor Smith’s Scottish burr echoed within Adam’s head. <Quite right. I, er, forgot about that feature. Apologies, m’colleague.>  
  
Mash’s thumb and index were now resting lightly on her forehead.  
  
“I’m not saying that your Caster is undeserving of the Throne, Adam-san” she said slowly. “But can he even… do… ?”  
  
Smith’s feet creaked softly on the deck as he rematerialized.  
  
“I beg your pardon, Shielder,” he said, sounding just a touch indignant. “While it is true that I am hardly a warrior out of legend such as the good master MacCool or the Hound of Coolann, I am still a Servant, with all that the title implies. Nor am I entirely without my own merit.” Once more, the man’s cane materialized, and Smith fumbled briefly for it before rapping its tip against the deck. “My Item Creation, in particular, ought to be of great use during our journey.”  
  
Adam couldn’t help but blink, frowning in confusion. Smith wasn’t exactly known as a craftsman; nor, to Adam’s knowledge, had he ever taken any sort of major sea voyage.  
  
The first economist bobbed his head up and down, the rest of his body perfectly still upon the junk’s deck even as every other human swayed slightly with the waves.  
  
“Given the appropriate amount of currency, specie or otherwise,” Smith continued. “I am able to procure… well… anything. Anything at all.”  
  
As Smith spoke, Adam couldn’t help but grin, sitting up just a little straighter than he had been as he considered the implications.  
  
“What a... capital ability,” he remarked.  
  
Ko giggled into his shoulder. Toby, for his part, groaned into his bucket, followed by a low gurgling sound.  
  
The tall Scot beamed at him. “A pun!” he chortled. “Quite so, quite so. It appears to be named ‘Free Exchange,’ which is approximately what I would have termed it, myself.”  
  
“I would have gone with ‘Robinson Crusoe,’” Adam replied. “But I can see why not.”  
  
Smith looked as if he was about to ask why when his fiancée spoke up - right. He was getting distracted again.  
  
“When you say anything,” Ko interjected, “do you mean any mundane thing, or can we buy magic items from you as well? How broad is your purview?”  
  
Smith pursed his lips for a moment before responding. “Any commercially available item which could be purchased by the currency utilized. For example, I don’t believe you could purchase _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_ with Roman denarii. Nor, unfortunately, could you purchase a First Folio using any medium.”  
  
“There goes my dream of getting a Honus Wagner,” Adam muttered, half-ruefully, half-joking.  
  
“Does it have to be something that exists in the place where you’re invoking this skill?” Ko asked. “Or just something that hypothetically _could_ exist, given the currency used in the transaction?”  
  
“Dramamine,” Toby croaked hopefully.  
  
“That is to say, which is the stricter limitation,” she persisted, “your environment or the currency in play?”  
  
“The latter,” Smith confirmed.  
  
Instinctively, Adam felt for his wallet - only to remember that it was on his nightstand, several centuries and two alternate dimensions away.  
  
“Physical currency, to be sure?” Dory asked, raising a hand.  
  
“Yeah,” Adam spoke up, glad that his Servant’s metaphysical abilities hewed so closely to his own area of expertise. “We’re talking M0 - no bearer bonds or travelers checks permitted. If you have any questions, please contact your nearest central bank.”  
  
Smith nodded in confirmation, a curious twinkle in his overlarge eyes at the last phrase.  
  
Mash delicately coughed into her fist, “A fascinating subject, Smith-sensei, but we were asking about combat.”  
  
Smith nodded his head. “...Yes,” he admitted slowly. “While I do not believe I would meaningfully contribute against most Servants, I can at least ensure that the rest of you are not harassed by lesser threats meantimes.”  
  
Da Vinci’s voice crackled over the group’s wrist comms. “So, to be clear, ‘Indy,’” the gender-flipped inventor stated. “You are going to be fighting. Can you deal with that?”  
  
Adam nodded before he realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to see him. “Yeah.” His words came hesitantly, but clearly, even as he felt Ko’s hug tighten around him. “To save reality? Yeah.”  
  
He hadn’t really fought… anyone before. But foolishly volunteering for things and then coming through on them regardless of his misgivings? That was right up his alley.  
  
Ritz moved across the small circle, and kneeling down, put his hand on Toby’s shoulder.  
  
“Bennett-san, if you’ve got a moment.” Toby’s head bounced a bit, like he was maybe suppressing a burp, maybe nodding, before he motioned with a hand to continue. “I will not ask you to fight in this state, but would you be willing to support us with your Servant?”  
  
Even as Abigail nodded, Toby lifted his head to shake it as emphatically as he dared. “ _Nuh-uh_ ,” he said. “She’s a _kid_.”  
  
“Mr. Bennett.” Roman’s voice came over the comms, his tone stern. “Regardless of her apparent age, she is a _Servant_.”  
  
“Even if we don’t know what the hell her class is,” da Vinci could be heard muttering over the comms.  
  
“Until such time as Abigail fighting is the difference between life and death, she--” Toby heaved, gasping. He took a few deep breaths and spat into the bucket before continuing. “Until then, she’s not fighting. Even ignoring the risks unique to her powers, Abigail is a child _first_ , Servant _second_.”  
  
Adam had to agree with Roman, but Toby was as stubborn as only someone who had willingly gone to law school could be. The man had all the rhetorical style and momentum of a charging bull, and this was, unfortunately, exactly the area that he had the most expertise in out of the five of them. Adam wouldn’t be able to convince him; barring Ritz deciding to directly intervene himself, he wasn’t sure that anyone present _could_.  
  
“Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.” The wrist comms buzzed with static as da Vinci exhaled. “Very well, Mister Bennett. We are starting preparations for your rayshift now.”  
  
Wait. What?  
  
Toby sighed. “Da Vinci, does Chaldea have anything on record about the _Foreigner_ class?”  
  
“...Respectfully, Mister Bennett,” Da Vinci’s tone indicated ‘respectfully’ was the politest word she could use, “that isn’t relevant; we cannot risk a Master candidate if their Servant is unable to fight.”  
  
Toby went silent for a little bit, his hands white-knuckled where he gripped the bucket. He looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but took a deep breath to try and calm himself down. It didn’t look to have worked very well.  
  
“After the Singularity is resolved,” he said, “we’re sitting down and talking. I don’t _like_ your decision, but that dislike is couched in information you had no way to have.”  
  
“A discussion is very much looked forward to,” da Vinci said, her voice warming, yet still stern. “Rayshift preparations will take some time. In the meantime, sit tight.”  
  
An awkward silence dropped between everyone at that, until Mash kicked lightly at the deck, and tried to keep the conversation going.  
  
“So,” she asked, hesitating. “Why is it that you all have nicknames that have nothing to do with your actual names?” She pointed at Adam. “Indy.”  
  
At Jacob. “Dory.”  
  
At Bennett. “Toby.”  
  
At his girlfriend. “Ko.”  
  
Everyone had to crack a smile at that.  
  
Adam shrugged. “I’m Filipino,” he admitted. “That’s… just sort of a thing we do, with people we’re close with. You know, like, your-”  
  
“Nakama,” Dory interrupted with a weak grin.  
  
Adam groaned, shaking his head . “... goddamn weebs.”  
  
“Oh,” Mash said, chuckling nervously. “Ah. Right.”  
  
And with that final bullet of awkwardness, the conversation finally died.  
  


* * *

  
“You took Latin in school, right? What was that thing da Vinci said earlier, about bringing forth justice or whatever?”  
  
“Fiat justiam, et cetera?” Adam asked, thankful to have something to take his mind off Toby’s… unhelpful behavior. His own ignorance was hardly bliss, but everyone else was dealing with the situation with considerably more grace. “The usual translation is - ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.”  
  
“Ah,” Ko nodded. “One of those ‘if we sacrifice our ideals to get the job done, what were we protecting in the first place’ things.”  
  
Their respective spirits were still above deck - Finn, because he apparently knew how to sail, and Smith, because despite his rotund physique, he was still somehow strong enough to give Schwarzenegger a run for his money. Given Ko’s state, he’d suggested moving below decks - get her out of the sun. It wasn’t much of a quality of life improvement, but it was something.  
  
Adam sighed. “Dear, that’s… a very generous interpretation of the phrase.”  
  
His fiancée bumped him lightly with an elbow. “How so?”  
  
Looping an arm around her, Adam leaned back against the junk’s inner hull, shrugging to coax the most comfort from the material. “If the heavens fall, then justice is going to be in pretty da-rn short supply. It’s the kind of thinking that gets you exploded in the Antarctic.”  
  
“Geez,” Ko said, frowning. “You really wanna sh- dump on the only unambiguously heroic thing that guy does in the entire comic?”  
  
Adam frowned back. “I’m saying that when your principles will directly lead to a horrific result, then maybe the principle isn’t that great.”  
  
“Fair enough,” she conceded. “But slippery slope arguments are inherently uncharitable. Where’s the phrase actually _from?_ Does it exist to prop up the kind of thinking you’re ascribing to it?”  
  
“It’s actually a newer Latin phrase,” Adam admitted. “We don’t really know the origin - I don’t think there are any records of it in antiquity. But yeah, that’s the idea behind it - damn the torpedoes, I’m doing what’s right.”  
  
She was quiet for a while after that, content to lean against him in silence, but he could feel the tension in her shoulders.  
  
“I just think it’s a little cheap to be so fixated on realpolitik that you can’t appreciate the strength of will it takes to reject what’s most convenient in favour of a moral principle,” she said finally, all in a rush, like she wanted to get it out before she lost her nerve. “Like, Toby’s being unreasonable, but he’s only unreasonable in light of the stakes.”  
  
“I’m sure that da Vinci said it _because_ of the stakes,” Adam admitted, closing his eyes briefly. As he did so, he pulled Ko into a full hug, her head coming to rest just below his chin. “... it’s just… I’m not completely blind, darling. You and Dory and… fuck, Spence really is cargo right now - and Toby too. All four of you are in pain, and I’m-” He broke off with a rough sigh.  
  
Ko petted his knee, but didn’t say anything.  
  
“He was so quick,” he said, when he’d made something resembling an organization of his thoughts, “to emphasize how this wasn’t a game, we can’t play around, Adam Smith is useless and Finn McCool is totally lame… but he won’t even consider using the spirit he _deliberately tried for_ and succeeded in getting.”  
  
He felt horrible for saying it, but just saying the words, imperfect as they were, chipped away at the weight in his chest with every syllable, carrying it out with his breath.  
  
“... wait, he called _Finn_ lame?”  
  
While that was not where he expected she’d take the conversation, he found himself grateful for the unexpected detour. “Nnnot as such, no. It was more of a… look? When he first appeared?” Adam shrugged. “I don’t suppose it goes without saying that I don’t know who the man is, other than ‘Irish and badass’? The only Celtic myth I know is Lou the All-Crafted vs. Balor the OG Balrog.” He paused briefly before remembering. “Oh, and the faeries.”  
  
She jolted out of his embrace and shushed him with a ferocity that almost made him flinch. “Honey. _**No.”**_  
  
“Sorry,” he said instinctively. And then, tone affronted, “Hey…!”  
  
She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, honey, but of all places not to call the gentry by that name and attract their attention, this is one of the more serious business ones. Finn might have +1 against them because of some of the stuff in his legend, but he isn’t always gonna be on hand to get between you and whoever pops by.”  
  
Adam’s lip wrinkled, but he swallowed his initial remarks in favor of, “I understand, dear. At the same time, we _are_ in a ship in the middle of the ocean. I’m not going to pull an Odysseus,” he added, noticing her worried pout, “but they can’t be everywhere. But, yes... consider me suitably chastised.”  
  
Mischievously, he hooked his chin against her collarbone, his cheek rubbing against her neck.  
  
“Parrot,” he enunciated clearly, and the resulting giggle from one of their oldest jokes ruffled his hair and sent his heart aflutter.  
  
She opened her mouth, but whatever she’d been about to say was swallowed by the sound of bells ringing from up on deck.  
  
“SHIP HO!” William Tell apparently had quite the set of lungs on him. “SHIP OFF THE PORT SIDE!”  
  
The two of them made their way above decks to see things much the same as they had been for the past while. Blue blue blue as far as the eye can see, but the ropes and rigging were moving on their own, and Coo was standing beside Ritz and Mash between the mast and the wheel.  
  
Ching Shih stepped away from the wheel, the thing holding perfectly still even as she pulled a spyglass out of her coat, muttering what had to be profanities under her breath.  
  
Ritz was frowning, looking out to sea… which, following his gaze, revealed absolutely nothing to Adam. The sun reflecting off of the sea looked like a mass of liquid gold, but there wasn’t a ship in sight. “It’s clearly a more Western ship, and there’s people on it. But he can’t tell much more than that.”  
  
“So, what do we do in the meantime?” Adam asked, even as he tried to puzzle it out for himself. There were undoubtedly tasks that needed to be done, but given that the ship was controlled by magic - there wasn’t a crew member aboard who wasn’t a Servant or Master - what he could do that Ching Shih couldn’t wasn’t clear.  
  
“Load the guns,” Ching Shih grunted, nodding to a chest near an alcove. “Arm yourselves. Stow the rest on the racks.” Looking to where she was pointing, Adam noticed several neat angled brackets, as boxes and crates began to slide across the deck to form barricades around the area.  
  
He’d never actually used a flintlock before, but Adam knew the general theory behind them; he’d seen Sharpe. The chest contained a dozen or so rifles - no, they had to be muskets- and as many flintlock pistols - a smaller chest contained paper cartridges filled with pre-measured gunpowder and musket balls.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Adam braced himself as he bit into the first cartridge - the powder within tasted even worse than he’d imagined; he held the ball between his lips, trying not to get any of it on his tongue. _It’s alright,_ he thought to himself. _It’s a magic gun. I can’t get lead poisoning from a magic gun._ Spitting out the knot, he dumped the rest of the powder down the barrel before following up with the bullet. Sharpe didn’t use a ramrod, but it was there for a reason - he pulled it from its spot under the barrel and lowered it down until he thought it had settled into the barrel.  
  
The musket now loaded, he set it upon the nearest rack, and set about repeating the process.  
  
<<Smith,>> he thought, trying not to vomit at the taste of gunpowder. One time, as an extremely drunk undergrad, he’d tried the cinnamon challenge. There was only a small fraction of gunpowder which even leaked into his mouth and it was already worse. <<Mind giving me a hand?>>  
  
The spirit he had summoned stepped in behind him. “Yes,” Smith murmured. “I rather think I shall.”  
  
A wave of dizziness rushed through Adam, like he’d stood up too quickly after a nap, and he was forced to use the half-loaded musket as a cane to remain upright, the round in his mouth dropping onto the deck and swiftly rolling out of sight. A moment passed, and while his heart was still racing, Adam felt well enough to turn and see the remaining twenty or so guns neatly placed on their respective racks, half-cocked and clearly loaded.  
  
“Here,” Smith dropped a single metal ball, its surface still slick with saliva, into the weapon in Adam’s hand. “I think that should be everything. Though I believe there were some broadswords in there as well - not my own first choice, but better to have one and not need it, eh?”  
  
There were, in fact, several sheathed _dao_ , and Adam only briefly hesitated before starting to tie one to his belt. If he actually was in a situation where using it would be needed, things had almost certainly gone horribly wrong. But hopefully, the mere act of wearing a weapon would discourage the actual need.  
  
Of course, the phrase “infinite pirates” wasn’t exactly one to throw around lightly, and Toby’s current state of agitation meant that it was probably approximately accurate.  
  
“Where are Dory and Toby?”  
  
Ritz looked over to him. “They’ve gone below decks. It’s a lot easier this way.”  
  
Every so often, the Japanese teen would look over the port side, scanning for the ship. Adam mirrored his movements - he still didn’t see anything.  
  
“When the fighting starts,” Ritz said quietly. “Stay behind Mash’s shield. We aren’t Servants - our job is to coordinate and enhance them.”  
  
Large words for a man whose conversational English hadn’t been the best during their first meeting. A translation spell of some sort?  
  
Ko had already crossed the deck to speak to the pink-haired girl, and whatever they were doing, it involved a lot of hand waving and frantic gesturing. Presumably she was going over tactics. It should be fine. She was good at this. And she had a lazy-eyed Irish hero watching her back, the bastard.  
  
“If.” Adam tried for a smile. “If the fighting starts.”  
  
Ritz returned the expression, stronger and yet more somber. “It likely will.”  
  
It wasn’t a heavy sword. Less weight to it than the weights he used on the odd days actually went to the gym to exercise, and he used the five pound dumbbells for a bunch of the lifts. But it felt heavy.  
  
Maybe half an hour later, he finally saw the masts of the other ship. Another half-hour, and he could see its flag - white, with a red “X” stretching across it.  
  
“Any idea who that is?” Ritz asked. “You’re Western.”  
  
Adam shook his head, and looking over to Smith, the other economist could only shrug.  
  
Ching Shih, on the other hand, turned her head and spat at the sight.  
  
“Spain,” she muttered darkly.  
  
“I don’t know any Spanish pirates,” Adam admitted. His knowledge of history was… American. Better than average, sure, but he’d admit to not knowing the difference between the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War. There was also a Seven Years War somewhere in the annals of post-Medieval to Napoleonic European history. Maybe.  
  
“It’s possible others would,” Ritsuka started before he looked to the woman at the helm. “Do you, Captain?”  
  
“He wouldn’t call himself a pirate,” she said with a frown, turning the wheel, “But that’s what he is.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
The pirate queen’s eyes distinctly met Adam’s as a dangerous grin spread across her face, “You may have heard of him. That ship is the _Trinidad_ , and I’d bet a whole share that Magellan is at the helm.”  
  
The pink-haired canon protagonist nodded thoughtfully even as her companion looked confused. Ko, on the other hand, had her jaw set, one of her hands slipping into his.  
  
How Ching Shih knew the ship name and Magellan’s identity so quickly was a question for another day; Adam stared ahead at the approaching mast as his fingers tapped out a drumbeat against the dao at his side.  
  
“There once was a man, his name was Magellan,” he half-murmured, half-sung to himself. “A Portugese skipper, the girls found him cute….”  
  
Mash only looked more confused. “Indy-san,” she began. “What do you mean?”  
  
He chuckled quietly - apparently Mash was not a woman of culture. Though he’d never heard of any mythology involving a pink-haired girl with a massive fuck-huge shield, so a person from the Middle Ages or whenever probably couldn’t be expected to know.  
  
“Magellan was a- hurm,” he pursed his lips. “He gets called an ‘explorer,’ but history, the victors, yadda yadda.” He smiled faintly, eyes fixed on the ship in the distance. “He was killed in the Philippines trying to convert the local population.”  
  
Ching Shih’s gaze was fixed on Adam. “ A Servant's legend will often tell you their weakness.”  
  
She thrust her chin at the assembled weaponry. “Change of tactics. If we don’t sink the Trinidad from afar, you, Ritsuka, are to keep Adam supplied with firearms. I and the rest of the Servants will try to kill the _gwailou_ ourselves of course, but if we are shot, it will not be so bad. If he is, though-” Her smile looked eerily similar to that of a doting mother, in stark contrast to her actual words.  
  
“Ah,” Adam noted. “Is this- I mean, are these tactics-?”  
  
“Are you questioning me, Master Adam?” Her eyes narrowed, and her head moved from side to side by the smallest of margins.  
  
“...no, Captain,” Adam was forced to admit. Looking at the Chinese pirate queen, he knew, with every fiber of his being, that questioning the short woman while aboard her ship would have her cut him down. Spence wasn’t here to tell her to stop - and while he trusted that the other Servants would try to step in… this was the worst time for any sort of disagreement.  
  
Even still, his arm trembled, and he rested it against one of the boxes of the barricade, trying to disguise the motion.  
  
He’d never actually shot at anything not made of paper before. And the last time he’d done that had been six years ago.  
  
“Heh,” he tried for a chuckle, stilted and unnatural as it was. “Sail us closer, I want to hit them with my sword?” Just in time, he remembered not to give Ching Shih any order, turning the meme from command to question right before he’d cut his own throat.  
  
Ching Shih nodded, a thin smile on her lips. “That is the plan. We’ll make it easy to remind the ‘Explorer’ of the dangers of his trade.”  
  
If this were a movie, there’d be a smash cut straight to the battle. But this wasn’t a movie, and after her proclamation, they still had to actually close in. The pirate queen wove her sails to and fro with the winds, twisting, turning, approaching the _Trinidad_ at her own time and in her own angle. As she did so, so too did the other ship, jockeying to find an optimal solution.  
  
Coo was still at the front of the ship, but his staff was no longer waving; the waters grew choppier and the ship jumped as the waves and currents of the ocean battered against the nameless junk. Adam’s stomach lurched with the same intensity it’d had when they had first set sail; he began to take slow, deep breaths that tasted of salt spray mixed with the promise of gunpowder.  
  
The entire time, the other ship grew larger and larger, no longer a speck on the horizon. It was resolving into something approaching a ship when Ching Shi attacked.  
  
With a sudden turn of the wheel, the ship groaned, wood creaking as its Captain turned hard to the starboard, the deck leaning as she did and presenting the port side to the _Trinidad_ before the world thundered and wood _shook_.  
  
It was one thing to hear and see cannons fire in a movie. Adam had even heard a real one boom when he’d seen a performance of the 1812 Overture.  
  
But the concussive force of two decks worth of guns opening fire beneath his feet was something else entirely. The deck rocked and shivered under his feet, his breath caught as the shockwave resounded through the wood and air. The pressure and reverberation echoed all around him, filling his heart, his lungs, his very thoughts.  
  
Streaks of brilliant light like tracer rounds lanced through the air and across the distance, and the _Trinidad_ visibly turned in the several seconds it took for them to travel the distance, geysers of water shooting up–  
  
It was only as the ringing in his ears started to fade that he could hear the tail end of a scream becoming a small sob.  
  
Ching Shih spit out what had to be a curse even as she spun the wheel in another direction, the sails shifting once more.  
  
Puffs of white smoke erupted from the _Trinidad_ , ripping Adam’s gaze back towards it in time to squint as brilliant light flashed beside him, Coo’s staff at the end of a sweep before black and purple dashed across his vision like a car from the sidewalk, the shield swinging with the motion.  
  
Metal smashed into the shield with a sound that could Adam could only compare to the time a mad driver had slammed into another car right in front of him, a clang and a crunch and a crash louder than it had any right to be as Mash literally knocked aside a black lump of metal that dissolved into golden sparks moments later.  
  
Only after the return volley was negated by the Servants around him did he hear the boom.  
  
 _Oh,_ some part of him realized. His arm and hand were bent in front of his face, as if there was a chance of it actually doing something. _Of course cannonfire would break the sound barrier_  
  
Seawater rained down from the columns of water falling back to the ocean around their ship.  
  
“Can you keep that up?” Ching Shih called out, looking to Ritz.  
  
“Yes!” The boy nodded. “Do you intend to approach directly?”  
  
“Winds allowing. I can’t fire again without damaging the cargo.”  
  
A sharp nod was his only response even as he looked to his own apparition. “Tell-san, focus on the leading shots and our left! Coo, the right. Mash, you’re our last line.”  
  
A chorus of agreement was the response even as the ship turned and the three of them moved quickly. A slight contact on Adam’s shoulder nearly had him jumping out of his skin before his brain caught up that Ritsuka was looking at him. “We’ll want to move towards the prow, to make it easier for Mash to cover us until we’re coming up to the other ship.”  
  
“Right-,” Adam started to say, before the sound from the next volley of cannonballs roared in his ears.  
  
Who knew how long his ears would be ringing after this?  
  
The deck of their ship swayed from side to side as they approached the _Trinidad_ directly, making a beeline for the source of cannonfire. Minutes dragged, and the wood of the flintlock in Adam’s hands grew slick with the sweat on his palms. The sun was warm against his skin.  
  
Mash, pink-haired and with all the size and spunk of the nest of chipmunks that had rooted into his parents’ house, stepped surefooted over slippery planks, dragging with her a hunk of metal and wood the size of a small car. Every time she batted aside another cannonball, invisible to his eyes, the impact would jar his bones with the sheer force involved - he learned very quickly to keep his jaw slack, lest he bite through his tongue.  
  
Every time the air around them roared at the displacement, salt making the exposed portions of their skin itch and sting as droplets were thrown into them like hard rain.  
  
And yet the minutes dragged on.  
  
He might’ve tried to keep count of the number of deflections the first Servant he had ever seen had performed, but they soon blurred together in their approach. His stomach churned and he had to swallow down bile when they passed through one of the dissipating smoke clouds the Trinidad had left in its wake–  
  
Pain flared in his shoulder, and then he heard the crack.  
  
Wood sprayed in the air as a cannonball glanced off of Mash’s shield and tore through one of the railings with a terrifying crack and crunch. Splinters sprayed all around him, specks of sawdust and shrapnel sticking to the seawater soaked suit. A quivering wooden shard, the size of a carpenter’s nail, was lodged maybe a quarter of an inch into his shoulder.  
  
It wasn’t much, barely even counting as a flesh wound. He’d had worse wounds from cooking, either from a dull knife or accidental contact with a hot oven.  
  
His heart raced all the same.  
  
Adam’s hands were shaking so badly that the flintlock nearly slipped through his fingers.  
  
He looked up and the _Trinidad_ had pulled alongside them, close enough that he could see the sailors on the other ship making ready with gangplanks.  
  
From the cabin at the rear of the ship came a man who could only be Magellan himself. Tall and darkly-bearded, the archetypical Spainard’s helmet on his head, he wore a dull iron breastplate over black sleeves slashed with white, his hand on the hilt of a crusader’s sword at his hip. An intricately worked golden cross set with rubies and pearls dangled from his neck, gleaming in the bright sunlight.  
  
“You! Oriental! Release the women and a chest of coin into our custody, and we’ll trouble you no further,” he shouted.  
  
Mash let out a sigh with a cadence that implied this was an all too regular occurrence; Ching Shih, on the other hand, twitched her gaze towards the cannons she didn’t dare fire.  
  
“The coin I understand,” the pirate queen called back. “But I did not expect you to be a slaver.”  
  
“I could not permit such flowers of Christendom to remain in the hands of heathen pirates and call myself a man.” As the ships drifted ever closer, he required less volume to speak - though he continued to shout nonetheless.  
  
Adam couldn’t help but stare at the man - the first European to set foot on the Philippines. The first brick in the wall of colonization that had characterized its history for five centuries. Even the place’s name had been obliterated, overwritten by the name of a king who had never so much as laid eyes on it.  
  
He felt Ko’s hand on his uninjured shoulder, and then her hot breath in his ear. “I know you get first dibs, but if he calls me a Christian again, Finn and I will not be held responsible for what we do next.”  
  
With Ko’s presence so near, he’d missed the next verbal exchange between the two captains; the meaning of the gesture that the Chinese woman had made, however, was pretty damn unmistakable.  
  
Magellan’s nose wrinkled, his stern expression morphing as a self-satisfied grin on his face. “Then in the name of Jesus Christ, I shall save these-”  
  
Magellan’s eyes, still tracking over the ship, finally fixed on Adam.  
  
“ _Cayralyo_ ,” he breathed. “Not again….”  
  
It felt like moving through water, every motion fluid, but almost exaggerated. The wooden butt of the musket brushed against Adam’s cheek; the small grooves on the musket’s hammer pressed against his thumb as he drew it back.  
  
Smoke erupted from the barrel of the musket, and a small crater blossomed in the mast behind Magellan, showering him with dust and splinters.  
  
It was Smith, wreathed in smoke from the discharged weapon, who took the musket from limp, unresisting hands, before pressing another into them.  
  
“Good lad,” his voice was low, warm, abuzz with Scottish brogue. “Keep it up and we’ll be out of this in no time at all.”  
  
And then he was gone, disappearing into the grand melee to which Adam had given birth. The clash of their Servants against the conjured pirates of this Singularity was too fast, too intense; only moments and brief images flashing before his eyes amidst the smoke and fog of war.  
  
Fire and smoke.  
  
The wooden butt of the musket against his cheek.  
  
Ringing ears with shouts muffled like they were through water.  
  
The small grooves of the hammer pressing against his thumb.  
  
Bullets and cannons whizzed and whistled through the air, the shadow of safety of Mash’s shield always passing in front of them even as lights flashed from the sides.  
  
The weapon kicked into his shoulder as smoke erupted from its muzzle.  
  
He was being shuffled around, nudges from the corners of boxes and coils of rope guiding him around the deck.  
  
A spent long gun handed off, and replaced by another; he brought to his shoulder, trying to find a clear image through the chaos.  
  
Blurs of motion like motorcycles passing far too close dashed back and forth across his vision, leaving trails of smoke caught in their wake in the cacophony of battle.  
  
Wood against his cheek.  
  
All the while, Magellan, the infuriating Magellan, still managed to run, to hide. To duck behind the pirates that made up his crew. Always dodging, dipping, moving out of the way, never still when Adam was aiming.  
A pause, Magellan’s sword en garde. Adam’s tongue licked at the corner of his mouth-  
  
-another wave of dizziness sent him to his knees as Smith shouted “ **The Invisible Hand** ,” and the moment was lost.  
  
The splash; two pirates knocked overboard.  
  
Metal clanging off of Mash’s shield until a wave of heat washed over Adam.  
  
Once more he sighted down the long barrel at the conquistador by another name, the man already starting to move as his finger squeezed the trigger-  
  
Yellow flashed into red beside Magellan as a symbol lit up in an explosion, knocking Magellan right into the line of fire-  
  
The Servant’s sword flashed up even as he stumbled- only to drop just as suddenly, blood dripping down the hilt and blade, a hole in his right forearm.  
  
Magellan stumbled, clutching at his throat where a bolt was sticking out just above his breastplate, blood pouring forth.  
  
“Captain-!”  
  
Even through the smoke, the man’s eyes met Adam’s, the eyes of a rat that was no longer cornered, but rather about to die… and had every intention of trying to take the cat with it.  
  
 **“Armada** ,” the words cut through the chaos, perfectly audible despite the impossibility of the action. **“De–”**  
  
Tell’s second bolt sent Magellan to the deck and pinned him there.  
  
Flames washed over the twitching figure, and only ashes were left in its wake.  
  


* * *

  
 _ **Ritsuka**_  
  
“Scans aren’t showing any other signatures near you,” Dr. Roman’s voice chimed in over Ritsuka’s wristband. “That seems to be the last of them.”  
  
Ritsuka’s eyes panned over the battlefield, barely resting on the corpses of pirates as they faded away into dust. Just as with the soldiers in Septem, he noted. Even their blood faded away, leaving no trace that a person had ever been there. What was noteworthy, though, was that the pirates’ ship remained. Even now it bobbed in the waters alongside theirs, the planks used by boarding parties seesawing over the waters of the Atlantic below.  
  
So that was that, then. He reached for the sheath of the chinese _dao_ he’d borrowed, using the affixed cloth to clean the blade before sheathing the sword, even though he knew the blood would disappear. It was just courtesy, he guessed. What he was _supposed_ to do.  
  
“Senpai.” Ritsuka turned to see Mash come up to him, her shield astralized once more now that the fighting was over.  
  
“How is Adam?” The two of them turned towards the man, slumped against the ship’s mast, spent musket clenched in white-knuckled hands even as his fiancee moved to comfort him, a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“I’m sorry Senpai, I couldn’t keep him perfectly safe.” Mash worried at her hands, hair shadowing her eyes even as she refused to meet his. “I tried, but…”  
  
“It’s okay,” Ritsuka said, putting a hand on Mash’s shoulder. She squeaked and looked up, a light dusting of pink crossing her cheeks before she turned away again. “Cannonballs and bullets is a little more to worry about than swords and arrows. And we’re on a ship this time, not dry land. Besides, it’s nothing we can’t handle with a Mystic Code, don’t worry. You did great, Mash.”  
  
“R-right,” she stuttered, though Ritsuka could see the way her shoulders relaxed, and the small, relieved smile that spread across her face. “Thank you, Senpai. U-um, I’ll go help the Captain with whatever she needs?”  
  
At his nod, Mash gave a small smile and went to assist Ching Shih with… plundering, he supposed? Ritsuka didn’t know pirates very well; One Piece was _not_ the most accurate source to learn from. He shook the thought from his head, and turned towards his new compatriot.  
  
“Adam-san.” Ritsuka brought up the hand with his wristband as he approached. “Dr. Roman, how’s he looking?”  
  
“Seriously, I’m- I’m fine,” the brown-skinned man insisted,even as his voice shook. Lying down on the deck, he tried to rise to his feet, his face noticeably pale, before his legs buckled and Ko had to catch him, lowering him back into a sitting position with a comforting murmur.  
  
“For once, the patient is mostly correct,” the doctor answered. “Contusions, scrapes. A sizable splinter in his left shoulder, but no more than an inch of penetration. Fairly good shape, overall. That said… he is very clearly in shock - keep him warm and don’t let him get up until he’s calm.”  
  
“I see.” In better shape than he himself had been during that first battle, in Fuyuki. Physically, at least. Mentally… he wasn’t so sure. Had he been this shaken that first time, when Mash destroyed those animate skeletons attacking them, moments after he was _certain_ she’d died in Chaldea? Was this his response to that early conflict, those first days of violence, which seemed so long ago now?  
  
He wasn’t certain. But then, this was not the time for idle musings.  
  
Ritsuka brought a hand up and placed it flat on Adam’s chest, just above his heart. Ko leaned back to give him more room, eyes still locked on her fiance’s injuries. The image of that black blade falling and the world exploding filled his mind, and a soft green light suffused his hand, sinking into the young man beneath him. Before their eyes, the accumulated wounds of the day sealed themselves, the splinter still buried in his right shoulder popping out and rolling along the deck as the mending flesh beneath it forced the intruder out.  
  
“Ahhhh- _Ow_ ” the older, far less experienced Master hissed. “You don’t need to cauterize it… oh.”  
  
“It feels worse than it is,” Ritsuka said with a smile, before he turned to face the other’s Servant. “Smith-sensei, can I leave him in your care?”  
  
“Of course, lad,” Smith responded, though privately Ritsuka wondered if he’d somehow forget - he’d dealt with many Servants, but none so… absent-minded.  
  
“I don’t suppose you have a spot of whisky on you?” the old professor asked pensively. “Steadies the nerves, you know.”  
  
“No drinking while on duty,” Ching Shih remarked. “See to my cargo and passengers. I shall inspect the _Trinidad_ ’s holdings.”  
  
“Understood, Captain!” Ritsuka replied. He turned to share a look with Mash, and they nodded at each other in understanding before heading inside for the stairs.  
  
“Lead the way, my lady Captain,” Ritsuka heard Fionn say as they descended the second flight. “I’m sure my Master won’t begrudge you the use of my Fintan Finnegas to make a proper appraisal…”  
  
Ritsuka didn’t quite catch the exact wording of the pirate’s response, but he wasn’t surprised to hear her indignation at the notion of someone besides her having a say in the value of seized goods. He felt a momentary stab of sympathy for her Master; strong-willed Servants had an undeniable charm, but even he would admit they were an acquired taste. Madame Ching in particular was less intimidating to him as a pirate queen than she was as the ghost of part-time jobs past.  
  
“The treasure is nice, but even so? I hope we don’t have to worry about boats again,” he murmured to Mash, as well as to Dr. Roman and da Vinci through his wristband, quietly enough that the others down below couldn’t hear. “Getting around Singularities was confusing enough on land. This is just inconvenient, if you ask me.”  
  
“It’s probably one of the few battlegrounds where we’re at a marked disadvantage to the locals,” da Vinci chimed in. “Servant-level combatants tend to tear up the environment, and when that environment is also your vehicle, things can get dicey, no?”  
  
“But at least Adam-san was a perfect match for the pirate we came across, no?” Mash had a bit of pep in her tone as she tried to lighten the mood. “I would say that was a happy coincidence!”  
  
“Fou, fou!” Ritsuka and Mash shared a smile at Fou’s agreement. Inwardly though, another part of him realized he’d lost track of Fou during the fighting. And that this wasn’t an uncommon event. Yet Fou kept turning back up, none the worse for wear, even occasionally having helped out.  
  
Though, Ritsuka mused as he ran a hand through Fou’s fur, the salt in the air had definitely mussed up the texture. So maybe that was part of why Fou had been so elusive.  
  
“How are the others?” Ritsuka asked Dr. Roman quietly.  
  
“Vitals jumped a bit during the fighting, and Spencer isn’t in the best of shape at the moment,” he said in reply. “Jacob and Bennett are about the same as they were before. On that note, Rayshift preparations are taking longer than anticipated; before the fighting I would’ve said about three hours, but now? It’s probably going to have to wait until tomorrow.”  
  
Ritsuka sighed. “Understood,” he told Dr. Roman. “I’ll try to keep everything stable until then.”  
  
“We have every confidence in you!” da Vinci cheered back. “Now, don’t you have some crew to check on?”  
  
“Right.” Ritsuka looked at Mash. The two of them shared a nod, and descended into the bowels of the ship.  
  
The lower decks of the… come to think of it, had the Captain mentioned the ship’s name? Ritsuka resolved to ask. The lower decks of the ship were mostly what he expected, and a little bit of what he didn’t: tight, cramped, dimly-lit, and a bit damp. What came as a surprise was how orderly everything was. Every good had its proper place, clearly sectioned off from each other. At the very fore of the lower decks was a door, leading to what he assumed was the captain’s cabin. The door hung open, and through it he could see Spencer, splayed out on what he could only assume was a bed, pale as a ghost, silk sheets piled on top of him in a heap, staring at the ceiling. Several hammocks hung from the walls, beams, and rafters of the cabin. Jacob sat on the floor beneath one, eyes on Ritsuka as he walked in, his pale skin caked in sweat even though he gave the veteran a thumbs up, his breathing steady and strong.  
  
And in another hammock, leaning against the wall with his Servant half-asleep on his lap, was Bennett, a frown on his face as he ran his hands through the girl’s hair, her hat laying beside them in the hammock.  
  
“Is ev—”  
  
Bennett’s hand flashed up to cut him off before extending one finger and putting it to his lips, a universal signal for silence, before pointing down at his Servant.  
  
“She only just calmed down,” he spoke quietly, voice barely not drowned out by the water around and below them. Abigail murmured something and shifted, and Ritsuka nodded in understanding.  
  
“How is everyone?” he asked, looking at the Masters in turn.  
  
“Tense.” Jacob nodded and stood with a strained smile, stretching before unzipping his jacket and fanning himself with the flaps. “But fine.”  
  
“Existence is pain,” Spencer remarked, as casually as if he were discussing the weather. Ritsuka didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply nodded.  
  
Bennett, for his part, didn’t answer. He just looked down at the girl, worry in his eyes. This was a different man than the one on the beach, fuming and ranting at everyone and everything within sight, and generally making a nuisance of himself, as if to spite just how useful he’d attested his knowledge to be. Everybody had their limits, RItsuka supposed. And a child in distress was his.  
  
Perhaps his choice to not let his Servant fight was an informed decision. But even then, there was something in _how_ he’d worded his refusal that put Ritsuka on edge. _’Even ignoring the risks unique to her powers’_.  
  
“Bennett-san,” Ritsuka began, keeping his voice low to not wake Abigail. “When you refused to let her fight. Was this what you were talking about?” He kept it vague, open-ended; even from what little Ritsuka had seen of the man, if offered the chance to speak, he would squeeze every last second of talking time he could from the opportunity.  
  
Bennett sighed through his nose. “Yes and no. It’s… a difficult, involved question that you’ll probably want Roman and da Vinci on the line to hear.”  
  
“We’re listening!” Leonardo da Vinci’s voice chimed in over his wristband, clear as day.  
  
“Shh!” Bennett shushed them. “Abigail’s—”  
  
“Not going to wake up unless she wants to, she needs to, or _you_ need her to. Child or no, she is a _Servant_ , Mr. Bennett. We function a bit differently from a normal human.”  
  
“... oh.” Bennett flushed slightly before breathing out in a huff. “Okay then, fine. Normal volumes then.”  
  
“Indeed. Anyway, you were saying?” Dr. Roman prompted.  
  
“Right, right.” Toby put one hand in front of his mouth and cleared his throat, even as he used the other to comb Abigail’s hair with his fingers. “So, to reiterate an earlier question: da Vinci, what information does Chaldea have on the _Foreigner_ class?”  
  
“It is a class that a Servant can be,” da Vinci snarked back.  
  
“So… nothing. Right, at the beginning then. As y’all know by now, there’s the seven standard classes, and then there’s the Extra classes for things that don’t quite fit. Mash is one,” he said with a nod at Ritsuka, “as a Shielder. The other Extra classes that I know of are as follows: Ruler. Avenger. Moon Cancer. Alter-Ego. Gunner. Monster. Saver. Savior. Beast. And Foreigner.  
  
“We-”  
  
“We are aware of some of them.” Roman’s voice was very, very calm as he interrupted da Vinci. “But continue.”  
  
“I probably know which ones you’re missing, but we’ll cover them another time.”  
  
As if his own brain had been setting him up for the punchline since back on the stairs, Ritsuka suddenly wondered who had it worse; a Master with a cocky Servant, or a Servant with a cocky Master.  
  
“Right now,” Bennett was saying professorially, “topic of the day: Foreigner. There are two distinct types of Foreigner-class Servants. The more bog-standard type is under that class simply because they exist outside of the solar system. As an example, the Voyager probe, once it runs out of power and ‘dies’ around the year 2032 will become a Heroic Spirit of the Foreigner class, simply because it was outside our solar system at its time of death and because it just doesn’t quite _fit_ any of the other classes.”  
  
“That’s a Pioneer of the Stars of ‘Yes’ if I’ve ever heard one.” Jacob muttered.  
  
“And he’s _adorable_ ” Spencer commented. “ˈlɪtl bab iː rəʊ bʌt fren.”  
  
“Please do not mispronounce words,” Ritsuka sighed. “The translation Mystic Code can only go so far.”  
  
“Sorry,” Spencer said. “‘Little baby robot friend.’”  
  
“... that _does_ sound adorable,” Ritsuka said with a smile, while trying to contain the little thrill of excitement that ran through him at the thought of their own Haro floating around the base. “We don’t have enough cute Servants in Chaldea.”  
  
“Senpai!” Mash choked out.  
  
“One of us,” Spencer hummed under his breath with a tiny grin. “One of us!”  
  
“Ahem.” Ritsuka turned back to Bennett at this, but the others only did once they noticed where his attention had gone.  
  
“Thank you.” Bennett shifted on the hammock to free one of his arm, stretching it with a slight groan before settling back down. “... sorry, stiff. As I was saying, the other type of Foreigner, Abigail’s type, is more dangerous. The second type consists of those people who have come into contact with an Elder God, Great Old One, or something like them, and come away changed by the experience. As a general rule, they have kept their sanity intact… for a given definition of _intact_. I know of _five:_ Vincent van Gogh, who will never let himself be summoned. Euclid of Alexandria, who my sources _heavily_ hint as being the architect of R’lyeh. Katsushika Hokusai, high priest of C’thulhu, and… the inventor of tentacle porn. And yes, that does mean every bit of tentacle porn is _technically_ a religious text of C’thulhu, much as he would like to _deny_ it.”  
  
A bark of laughter escaped Jacob, and he threw up his hands, chanting “Ïa ïa-!” before giggling.  
  
“Fascinating,” da Vinci deadpanned. “But let’s focus on the Foreigner at your side, shall we?”  
  
“Let me finish, please,” Bennett said, voice firm. “Possibility three: Yang Guifei, consort to Emperor Xuanzang Xian, and-”  
  
“Toby.” The bearded man sighed, a brief pause before he said, “You’re off track. Abby’s fueled by an eldritch god. Why is this _particularly_ relevant?”  
  
Bennett huffed, and made a big show of frowning and sighing before he continued. “Fine. Two words. Memetic. Hazard.”  
  
‘Hazard,’ Ritsuka knew, meant ‘danger.’ But how did internet jokes create danger?  
  
“While that makes sense to me,” Jacob said with an eyeroll, “I doubt they’re SCP-Wiki fans, so could you elaborate?”  
  
“Right… okay, forgot my audience.” Bennett sighed through his nose. “So. Abigail is what’s known as a Silver Key of Yog-Sothoth. For those not in the know, Elder Gods exist outside of the known universe, are comprised of essentially dark matter, and normally cannot interact with our plane of existence. Most of the Elder Gods use Foreigners as a sort of anti-Heroic Spirit to let them interact with us. Yog-Sothoth, on the other hand, can affect us by way of Silver Keys, which open locks, doors, and gateways, both physical and otherwise. Gateways between places, worlds, planes of existence… places man is not meant to see. They draw their power from Yog-Sothoth, but in doing so, they let him _in_. There are three Silver Keys that I know of. One, an artifact currently under lock and key in the Clock Tower. Two, a man named Randolph Carter, who is currently I-don’t-know-where-in-the-cosmos. And three?” He pointed down at the girl in his lap.  
  
“And yet he didn’t explain the term…” Jacob muttered with a sigh.  
  
“There are things man is not meant to know, much less do with a goat,” Bennett snapped back.  
  
“Baaaa.” Jacob retorted.  
  
None of their banter was making any sense. So many in-jokes and easy familiarity - was this how Team A would have interacted in the field?  
  
A familiar gloom settled on him. He knew he wasn’t the best Master Chaldea had recruited, and these new Masters had largely summoned powerful Servants on their first try. Once they’d gotten Circuits, would he even be necessary? He had held his position by virtue of being the last resort. But what would happen, now that this wasn’t the case?  
  
Sighing, Jacob shook his head and stepped forward. “While that’s useful info, to define a memetic hazard in rough terms: it’s a thought virus. Same way you can catch diseases from germs, you can get ideas or thoughts from… well, lots of things. But a memetic _hazard_ is something that can drive you crazy. Make you think strange things. Break your mind. Magical hypnosis is technically one, but when the term’s used, it usually means passive things. Like the visage of C’thulhu.”  
  
Bennett nodded absently, one foot twitching nervously as though in search of a floor to tap. “In order to fight, Abigail would need to draw power from Yog-Sothoth, either to toss energy from whatever interstitial void he inhabits at our enemies, or to just open up a gate and have Yoggy wail on people for us. Every time she does this, she has to let a little bit of the Elder God seep into her. The more Abigail fights, the less _Abigail_ she becomes, and the more _Yog-Sothoth_ fills in the gap. And this is all without mentioning that she is _opening gateways to an Elder God_. Even just _looking_ at Abigail fighting has a very real chance of hurting us. This is something she especially has in common with Yang Guifei, _who you didn’t let me finish mentioning, Dory_.”  
  
“Is she _here,_ Toby?”  
  
“It’s easier to describe _eldritch fire_ than it is to have to explain _gaping holes in reality filled with the eyes, teeth, whispers, and screams of dead gods dreaming,_ Dory.”  
  
With an outright facepalm, Jacob grumbled, “You’re getting too precise for an overview.”  
  
Spencer’s eyes flicked back and forth between them. “Mom? Dad? Please stop fighting.”  
  
"...no, that seems an apt description, Bennett-san," Ritsuka managed. He may not have seen exactly that, but the idea of space just looking... wrong… when Lev had thrown Olga into SHEBA…  
  
At some point, Mash had placed a hand on his shoulder. When Da Vinci’s voice came over the comms, Ritsuka found that he had been shivering in the Caribbean swelter. “You changed the aria on purpose to summon one. Why?”  
  
“Because the Foreigner class is _anathema_ to Berserkers.” Bennett’s free hand pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and his frown deepened. “And for our specific case: _Heracles_. For reasons I’m not entirely sure on, any Servant with Madness Enhancement is _absurdly_ susceptible to the exact thing giving Foreigners their power. If you threw a strong Berserker and a weak Foreigner into a pit, I would bet on the Foreigner every time.”  
  
“So, what you’re saying is that there is a passive defense against their abilities that is hampered by the loss of sanity and reason that Berserkers experience. Is that it?” Roman offered.  
  
“Essentially, yes. The problem is…” Bennett trailed off, sighing. “Abigail would have been my _last_ choice, if I’d had the option. She’s absurdly powerful, yes. But she’s also too young to really, well, _resist_ Yog-Sothoth, and she doesn’t deserve to lose herself like that. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, let alone a _child_.”  
  
Da Vinci cut to the chase. “You were going for a different Foreigner?”  
  
“Yang Guifei,” Bennett confirmed. “Either vessel, envoy, or high priestess of C’thugha, the only one of the Elder Gods I know of whose malevolence is pointed _exclusively at other Elder Gods_. Van Gogh isn’t an option for _reasons_ , Hokusai and Euclid would’ve been fine, but Yang would’ve been _perfect_.”  
  
“All the more reason for you to return to Chaldea,” Ritsuka put in. “You could use the simulator there to work with Abigail-chan, find a safe level to use her power at. But here you are at risk.”  
  
“I would need to calibrate the simulator with that in mind,” da Vinci said. “Given the ‘memetic hazard’ as you put it, I might—”  
  
“The plundering of the booty has been completed,” Spencer said, affecting a monotone.  
  
Almost instantly, Abigail bolted upright in Bennett’s lap, hopped out of the hammock, and ran upstairs above deck. He stared after her, gaping and open-mouthed.  
  
“Was… when did she wake up?” Bennett asked as his face paled.  
  
“Bold of you to assume she was asleep in the first place, my guy,” Spencer cut in, forcing himself up as he flexed and shook out his limbs.  
  
“ _Fuuuuuuuck,_ ” Bennett said, balling his hands in his hair.  
  
“Language, Bennett-san. There’s a child on board.” And rather than wait for a response, Ritsuka turned and headed above deck himself, Jacob soon following with a giggle.  
  
Getting up on to the deck, Ritsuka couldn’t help but marvel at the wealth on display. The Trinidad seemed to dissolve into golden sparkles as the plank between the two ships was lifted, the red flags now waving from its mast the last part to disappear into the ether.  
  
Crates, chests, barrels, and simply piles of various things were laid out on the deck of the ship. Neatly organized in piles and actually split up into groups. One of the piles was a literal pile of coins, gems, and jewelry, while the other, far larger pile was clothing, spices, and various crates of different items and goods.  
  
Everyone was gathered around the goods and materials. Except Ching Shih, who was quite literally sitting on the pile of silver interspersed with gold, the occasional jewel glinting in the sun.  
  
Ritsuka blinked, mildly surprised. This wasn’t the first time his battles in the Singularities had yielded spoils - actually, most fights did. They just tended to be fewer in number, or had a larger proportion of junk to useful items than the hoard in front of him now. His eyes flicked briefly over to Ching Shih, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how much riches he and Mash had overlooked in Orleans and Septem, just due to not knowing what had value or what to look for.  
  
“Oh,” Toby said. “So this is what it meant by ‘division of shares’. Was _not_ expecting it to be this… well.” He waved a hand at the pile. “ _This_.”  
  
“So how are we actually determining the share?” Jacob asked as he approached the group.  
  
Ritsuka looked over the assembled masters and Servants. Mash was carefully going through the assorted treasures, her mouth moving slightly as her fingers floated over them. Fionn had a slightly over-sweet smile as he suggested a necklace to his Master, who was examining a small acoustic guitar she seemed to have pulled from the pile.  
  
As for the others, Bennett fidgeted as he walked up beside Abigail, who skipped two steps off to the side of him. Bennett deflated, and Ritsuka couldn’t help but note it was the first time he and his Servant hadn’t been beside each other since her summoning. He felt some measure of sympathy for both of them, really: Bennett was having trouble dissociating his Servant’s status from her age, and was clearly acting to protect her. The Servant, meanwhile, was showing that age in her own way - she’d likely ignored all the protective justification Bennett offered for why he’d rather have summoned a different Foreigner, and fixated on not being _wanted_.  
  
And if Ritsuka was being honest with himself? He’d have focused on exactly the same thing.  
  
“It is a standard procedure, as outlined in the contract you all signed.” Ching Shih’s voice pulled Ritsuka from his thoughts, and he walked up alongside Mash and his fellow Masters. “80 percent of all currency, precious metals, or gems is owed to the admiral to cover fleet-related expenditures; 20 percent to the individual captain and ship. I am the admiral of the Red Flag Fleet.”  
  
The vast majority of the treasure dissipated, and she stepped off of the pile. In one of his more memorable English classes in high school, he recalled, they’d each taken turns reading aloud from _The Hobbit._ The look of satisfaction he saw now on the Rider’s face brought to mind a line he’d had stuck in his head for years after having particular trouble with it on his first read: _a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm…_  
  
“Master mac Cumhaill shall be acting as purser,” she said, nodding at the platinum blond man. “Captain has right of first shares and double shares, then quarter-master, then navigator each with one and one half shares. Then a share for each other crew member, in order of seniority.” She very deliberately did not smile in the direction of Bennett, who had very carefully gone through the contract, Jacob, who had tried (briefly) to negotiate it, and Ko, who hadn’t made a peep, but who had fairly conspicuously avoided signing the document until after they did.  
  
“As it so happens, I am also the Captain of this ship. And as Captain, my shares will be chosen by my cargo. Little brother?”  
  
“Oh god,” Spencer murmured, still green around the gills. “I have to make _decisions?”_  
  
He waved vaguely at a section that contained several smaller parcels wrapped in oilcloth. “I dunno, that bit?”  
  
Fionn popped his thumb into his mouth and then right back out. “Allspice, half a kilo; Black peppercorns, 1 kilo; Cinnamon, three hundred grams; Nutmeg, four hundred grams.” He picked up four of the parcels and offered them to the ‘cargo.’  
  
Ching Shih nodded in approval. “Spices are excellent value, very expensive,” she said. “Very good, little brother.”  
  
The woman herself took more of the spice parcels, with Fionn’s frown only deepening.  
  
“In absence of a formally appointed quartermaster, the captain shall be assigned such duties as well.”  
  
 _“Sassy,”_ Jacob laughed. “I’d legit like to interview for that. I’m not useful otherwise at the moment.”  
  
“There will be time for an interview _after_ the task at hand is completed,” Ching Shih stated.  
  
After Fionn took his share, Mash approached the dwindling pile of assorted goods, scanning the pile with an intensity Ritsuka had rarely seen from her outside of combat. Her eyes lit up when they landed on something, and she surged forward to retrieve her take from the pile. Ritsuka saw what looked like a cross between a ball and a pocket watch, but Mash caught him looking and hid it away with a blush.  
  
“What about this one, Master?” Fionn asked, the sunlight glinting off of a gold bracelet in his hand.  
  
“Fionn,” Ko chuckled, plucking at the strings of the guitar he’d claimed for her, “I dunno what part of ‘I’m not really a jewelry guy’ didn’t sink in, but I promise, I’m fine. I didn’t even do anything, it’s your share, not mine.”  
  
“Nonsense. My share is your share - my spear strikes in your service, my wisdom is invoked at your command! What about the ring?”  
  
“I already have one,” she said, lifting her hand away from the guitar’s neck to waggle her fingers at him, her silver-and-blue engagement band flashing in the sun.  
  
“That’s hardly a ring at all,” Fionn scoffed.  
  
“Your opinion is noted,” Adam drawled. “Dear, what would happen if I punched a Servant?”  
  
“It would be quite painful!” Fionn remarked, faux-cheerfully, his spear resting in the crook of his elbow. “For _you_.”  
  
Ritsuka didn’t feel comfortable intervening with the couple’s domestic… issue, but maintaining a good relationship between a Master and Servants was of the utmost importance.  
  
He was incredibly grateful, therefore, when Mash stepped in before he could come up with a good solution. “Fionn-san,” she began. “I am surprised your plan to improve upon the ring is to use plundered goods. I thought a ring was supposed to be something special chosen out for the bride…”  
  
“And I _have_ chosen,” Fionn nodded. “Exactly ri-”  
  
“Master of Caster,” the ship captain’s tone carried easily over the sounds of the waves and the conversation itself, “Step forward, please.”  
  
The brown-skinned man shuffled closer to the Servant, his head bobbing from side to side as if trying to find some way out of this. A faint smile touched Rider’s lips as she made a gesture with her hands, and three large golden coins appeared. She offered them to Adam.  
  
“In recompense for your injury in the line of duty,” she explained.  
  
It was a nice sentiment, Ritsuka supposed, as the man fumbled his hold on the coins. She could certainly afford to be generous.  
  
It was also, not very subtly, a stern warning by the pirate queen to drop the conversation.  
  
“...Hey,” Jacob said, breaking the silence that had stretched after the exchange and peering at what remained of the spoils. He pointed at an ornate black tricorne, edged in gold with inset rubies at the front. “If y’all don’t mind, can you leave me that hat?” He grinned. “I like that hat.”


	4. Okeanos | Chapter IV

    

**Okeanos Part IV  
 _Ritsuka_**  
  
The rains that had swept over the ship overnight had passed, the clouds seemingly evaporating in minutes after the rains had stopped. Ritsuka actually found it slightly disconcerting how quickly they had disappeared.  
  
And Tell had spotted land.  
  
“Navigator!” Ching Shih’s voice came from the helm, “Is that our island?”  
  
Fionn smiled serenely. “It is, Captain.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Ritsuka couldn’t help but agree. Even if things weren’t as hectic as they had been in other Singularities, the last few days had provided a challenge in their own way. Up until now, it had mostly been him and Mash versus the world, as it were; there had been a hundred fires, and they were the only ones able to put it out. Here, it was very much the opposite: instead of having too much to do and not enough hands to go around...  
  
“~[But then someone shouted, ‘Hey I think that’s Guam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJWqgJ8Nib4)~’”  
  
… it was more like herding cats.  
  
Adam had seemed to recover well enough; he and Ko had been attempting to reverse-engineer some song Ritsuka had never heard of, but the few scattered lyrics they had pieced together had been very well received by the other members of their group.  
  
Near the bow of the ship, Smith-sensei and Cu were engaged in some sort of discussion - Ritsuka wasn’t sure what exactly they were talking about, but the academic was gesticulating wildly while the Celt watched in amusement.  
  
Abigail leaned over the ship’s railing and waved at a passing pod of dolphins. She’d changed from her black wool dress into a lighter one of white cotton, richly embroidered around the collar with what looked to be gold thread and pearls, though Ritsuka couldn’t be sure. Apparently, Bennett had used Smith’s Item Creation to procure it - and severely overpaid. Ritsuka did notice that despite Abigail’s clear enthusiasm, she was fidgeting and prodding at the dress as though uncomfortable with it in some way. From past experience with cheap school uniforms, he could tell her discomfort wasn’t with the fabric itself. Or… actually wait, maybe it was, he realized. Just in the opposite direction: it was _too_ nice, perhaps.  
  
More telling was that she remained near her Master, who kept peeking at her with an expression Ritsuka couldn’t quite place whenever she wasn’t looking. Something had mended that rift, at least partly. Given his own experiences, he’d put money on the ‘dream cycle’ as the culprit.  
  
The wood of the stairway behind Ritsuka creaked, and he turned around, half-expecting Mash to greet him. But to his surprise, it was actually Jacob, whose normally ghost-like pallor had actually had some color return to it.  
  
His concern must have shown on his face, because the man smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. “I’m fine, surprisingly.”  
  
This didn’t do much to assuage Ritsuka’s fears. “Are you sure you should be moving around? Roman said that you should be using as little energy as possible.”  
  
“Sitting around like a sack of potatoes isn’t helpful either.” He shrugged. “The command seals mean I’m not using up my od, heck, best guess is that I’m actually recovering by staying on top of the refueling.”  
  
“Yeah, no, that’s not how it works.”  
  
Bennett had apparently noticed his... friend? (at times Ritsuka had to wonder) ascending to the main deck. And, as was becoming customary, he had to offer his opinion.  
  
“Topping up with a command seal doesn’t just _eliminate_ the drain on you,” Bennett explained with a frown. “If you plug an external battery into your phone, your phone doesn’t magically _stop_ using its battery. You should still be getting drained, at least a _little_ bit, and that you aren’t is-“  
  
“-oh!” Smith remarked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. “That must mean my Territory is setting up properly. Splendid.” Nodding in satisfaction, the man appeared ready to return to his prior argument with Cu before Jacob held up a hand.  
  
“Pardon. Could you elaborate on that one?”  
  
“Ah, well… I am a Caster, as you know. We do have that ability.” The Servant appeared befuddled by the question, even though he’d been the one that had actually raised the issue at hand.  
  
There was a slight twitch to Jacob’s cheek. “Ah, yes, but… why would your Territory affect _this?”_  
  
Smith blinked. In the distance, Ritsuka saw Adam get up and walk over to the rest of them. The Master and Servant stared at each other briefly, before the tall Scot’s cheeks reddened.  
  
“... And you’re quite sure?” he asked.  
  
Adam nodded.  
  
“... Ah.” Smith appeared genuinely apologetic. “I could have sworn that I’d explained all this the other day. At least, I meant to. I certainly thought about explaining.”  
  
“Get on with it,” Bennett groused. For once, Ritsuka found himself in agreement.  
  
“Oh! Right - I still haven’t. Dear me, where is my head today? Territory, in the context of the Caster class, is commonly understood to be a land-area in which a Servant exerts dominion. But the merely physical is, I think you will all agree, quite the antithesis of the class’s ethos. It is the understanding and use of the metaphorical and the abstract which differentiates a Caster from the other six - or seven, possibly more - classes.”  
  
Ritsuka hadn’t had much time to really get into the details of the classes in a philosophical way; most of his concerns had been focused on how their powers worked so he could avoid getting killed, so this was fascinating in its own way. But as Smith-san gestured with a hand, leaning on his cane, the youngest of the Masters could only wonder where this was headed.  
  
“As Servants, we are formed from mana and brought forth from the Throne, yet are sustained by the energy flow taken from our mortal Masters. Through the union of human history and mystic ritual, we are therefore permitted an existence capable of affecting the mortal world without mortal limitations. Under ideal circumstances, in fact, our actions may in fact enable our Masters to perform such deeds as to grant them access to the Throne of Heroes itself-”  
  
“A circular flow,” Adam finished for him, head nodding frantically, his words coming with little breath between them. “Your ‘Territory’ - you’re improving the energy flows between Masters and Servants - the economy between us. But you’re extending it to the others… because we’re already actively collaborating with each other.”  
  
The thickly-built man beamed. “Quite so, quite so,” he dipped his head. “The very nature of this ‘class-container’ system leads naturally to a division of responsibilities within a group according to their specialisation-”  
  
“-which leads to greater productivity. Or in this case, a positive-sum game.” Smith looked a tad befuddled at Adam’s final phrase, but the two of them seemed to understand each other well enough. As for Ritsuka?  
  
He was lost.  
  
“Pardon me Adam-san, Smith-sensei,” Ritsuka said, raising his hand briefly before remembering that although he stood before a professor, he wasn’t in a classroom. “But I do not understand the terms you used. Could you maybe explain in less… ano, complex? Yes, less complex terms?”  
  
“Right,” Adam coughed nervously, the man clearly somewhat embarrassed at all the attention now directed at him. “Smith, please correct me if I’ve got any point wrong. But basically - Smith’s making us more efficient at using our mana. And, if his analogy holds, he can also allow us to move some of the energy we’re using to sustain our Servants into another willing Servant.”  
  
“Correct in every particular,” Smith confirmed. “Though I was quite sure I had informed someone of this. I certainly intended to… unless it truly had slipped my mind….”  
  
“You hadn’t,” Bennett interjected.  
  
“... huh.” Jacob muttered. “An economy of mana.”  
  
A thoughtful frown crossed Ritsuka’s face; it would certainly explain why some of them weren’t slowly dying due to od depletion. Which was a weight off of his mind as to whether they would be dying on his watch.  
  
However, a tactical concern crossed his mind, “Ano, Smith-sensei, could the mana from a Command Seal be introduced to this… economy?”  
  
Smith tapped the side of his nose, beaming at the young man. “Quite so, quite so! Naturally, much like how water seeks the lowest point, any mana introduced would be absorbed by the one most in need of its use as well.”  
  
“We must all follow the Walrus Law,” Adam cackled.  
  
“... the what?” Bennett asked with a slight tilt to his head. One which, Ritsuka noted, his Servant copied in the other direction.  
  
Jacob held up a hand. “Seconded.”  
  
“...Thirded?” Ritsuka had to follow up.  
  
“...economics joke,” Adam admitted. “It’s basically the market clearing condition.”  
  
Ritsuka was relieved that nobody else seemed to have understood what the brown-skinned man was saying.  
  
“I _repeat_ ,” Bennett said flatly. “The _what_?”  
  
“...basically in this context, the supply of mana must equal the demand for mana. Honestly, it’s not that funny because the Walras Law applies to multiple markets rather than an aggregate…” the man sighed. “It would have killed at the Christmas party, alright?”  
  
“You realize,” the man’s fiancée called from across the deck, sliding a finger down the frets of her guitar to punctuate her words, “this is the tax exacted upon you for all those times you made Fate references he didn’t get, right?”  
  
A short bark of laughter escaped Jacob and Adam, while Bennett instead let out a pained groan, covering his face with his hands.  
  
Anticipating another derail, Ritsuka was happy when da Vinci’s voice broke in over the comms, “Well, such a territory would explain why we thought Adam had Circuits–”  
  
“Movement.” All discussion stopped when William Tell’s voice drifted down from the crow’s nest, silencing everyone down below. “Off the starboard bow. That islet-”  
  
“W-what!? Hang on, scanning the area,” Dr. Roman said, a sudden edge to his tone. “Okay, it’s… there! We’re detecting multiple Spirit Origins in that direction, including—”  
  
The now-familiar _whoomph_ of air from an Archer releasing their projectiles buffeted the group on the ship’s deck, and through Tell’s eyes, Ritsuka saw the man’s shot strike a swiftly-falling object. It slowed the inbound projectile, and it was only as his Caster’s follow-up burst of magic destroyed it that Ritsuka identified the incoming attack as a _boulder_ , thrown their way with prodigious strength.  
  
“Mash!” Ritsuka called.  
  
“Of course,” Mash said, taking position closer to the boulder’s trajectory, putting herself between the Masters and any further offensives. He kept some of his attention on what he could get from Tell and Cu, but the majority of his attention was now fixed on his fellow Masters.  
  
“Lancer,” Ko said, shoving the guitar into her Servant’s hands and stalking over to the rest of the group with a furrowed brow, “stow this somewhere it won’t break unless the boat sinks and return to my side immediately.”  
  
Before she was even done speaking, Fionn was off.  
  
Adam, his shoulders slumped, was already trudging towards the racks of muskets. Jacob’s lips had pressed into a thin line, face starkly pale as he continued to stare at where the boulder had come from, his hand digging into his chest.  
  
And at last, his eyes came to Bennett, who had already pulled his Servant in close, his face already falling in resignation.  
  
“Dr. Roman and da Vinci are confirming, but we are under attack by enemy Servants. With what you have shared, if it is—”  
  
“Scans have confirmed,” da Vinci’s voice came over the comms. “It’s the Argonauts. And we’re reading a Berserker—the signature is a near-perfect match to Heracles.”  
  
Ritsuka stiffened, and saw the others shift and pale in varying ways. Bennett had grabbed the nearest solid object, clinging tight enough that his knuckles had gone white. Jacob drew himself up, jaw clenching as he clearly forced his breathing to slow, glancing at a spot on deck. Adam, in the middle of loading, slammed the ramrod of the weapon down the barrel with far more force than he had previously. When he glanced at Ko, Ritsuka found she was already watching him, her eyes wider than he’d ever seen them before, her lips set in a thin line.  
  
“We need everybody helping for this.” Ritsuka pointed at the storeroom. “Arm up. Everybody fights here. No exceptions.”  
  
As though on cue, Fionn emerged from below decks - minus the guitar, but plus a weapon Ritsuka would have called a naginata if it weren’t Chinese. Manifesting his own spear, he handed the polearm to his Master and stepped back.  
  
“Thank you,” she said softly, testing the weapon’s heft with a surprisingly well-executed spin that nonetheless came within less than half a meter of accidentally nicking Ritsuka in the arm, before bringing it to rest on her shoulder.  
  
“Okay, **no** ,” Adam said with considerably more heat than Ritsuka had heard from him before, crossing the deck in two quick strides. “Dear, you can barely _see_ -”  
  
“I can see,” she retorted, “it just hurts to.”  
  
“- you are not fighting Hercules!”  
  
“You didn’t have a problem with me fighting when I stabbed a man in the neck right in front of you yesterday!” she snapped.  
  
Adam let out a strangled cry of concern and wrapped his arms around his fiancée. “Wh- if I had seen it I might have!”  
  
“It appears your concerns about vision problems were misdirected,” Fionn remarked.  
  
“Oh piss off, ghost,” Adam snapped.  
  
“Senpai,” Mash murmured, to which he nodded. He saw it too; he needed to get a handle on this, _quickly_.  
  
“That’s _enough_!” Ritsuka yelled. He didn’t like to raise his voice; it brought him to a place he didn’t like, mentally. But much as he would like to deny it, the efficacy of the short, concise shout was impossible to ignore. Everybody turned to him, expressions expectant as they waited for him to give commands. Hopeful, even. “We do not have time for you to squabble. We are under attack, and unless you have a better plan, you need to listen!”  
  
“Incoming.” Tell’s voice again carried from the crow’s nest, moments before the _whoomp_ of his projectiles breaking the sound barrier. Three quarrels struck Heracles’ second boulder within moments of each other, shattering it into pieces for Cu to dispose of with his magic. Some debris remained, tumbling down towards them on the ship, but Mash slapped it aside with almost contemptuous ease. Seeing her now as compared to when they began… it would have brought a smile to his face, if not for the severity of the position.  
  
In the back of his mind, Ritsuka could feel Cu suddenly pull hard on his mana reserves - a series of _Kenaz_ runes blossoming into existence and shattering just as quickly. Behind one of the boulders Tell had been forced to let the others handle, a focused beam of pale cerulean was lancing towards a tunnel visioning Adam -  
  
“Mash!” Ritsuka’s intent was already through the bond before he’d even finished calling her name. But his Shielder was on the other side of the ship, as a comet threatened to take out the center mast - and the crow’s nest that allowed Tell to act as counter-sniper.  
  
 **“Lord Chaldeas!”**  
  
“Saber-!” The armored servant was already materialized before their master finished the call, “The boulder-!”  
  
The knight slammed their blade into the stone with a crash and turned into the oncoming bolt of blue light, the magical attack slamming into their pauldron and partially melting the armor. The resulting shockwave knocked Adam over, his musket spinning over the side of the ship. Jacob grimaced, a vein in his neck bulging, his lips tinged blue.  
  
Looking over to the others, they weren’t fairing much better. The other Masters were trying to coordinate--  
  
This wasn’t going to work, Ritsuka realized. Their current positions meant the crew of the Argo was free to barrage his group with as much fire as they liked, without much fear of reprisal, and his own comparatively lower firepower at range was being mercilessly taken advantage of. They needed to get in closer, before the barrage depleted his comrades’ limited resources. He needed a plan. But to make that, he needed to know what he was up against—or rather, in this case _who_.  
  
“Mash, Doctor, da Vinci.” He paused, glancing to the side; there _was_ one more source available to him, wasn’t there? “Bennett-san.” Bennett’s breath hitched in his throat, but the man did stand up straighter on hearing his name, and though it wasn’t relief, he seemed a tad more… at ease, perhaps? Now that he had an actual _role_ , Ritsuka supposed. “The Argonauts. What do we know?”  
  
“Every Argonaut is a Servant at least on the level of William Tell,” da Vinci began, her voice calm and level, “even the lesser-known ones. Heracles is obviously the biggest threat, but he’s not the only one.”  
  
“And there’s a Medea-chan on that ship,” Ritsuka grimaced, an all-too familiar runic array faintly visible from their position.  
  
“If you see a white or black coat with overlong sleeves and a floating snake-staff, prioritize over Heracles. That’s Asclepius, take out the healer first or they’ll keep getting back up,” Bennett offered. “Harp means Orpheus, do not let him get close, I’m pretty sure his music’s a mind-whammy. Pair of blondes, boy and girl, that’s Castor and Pollux. If they show, send Fionn for them; until _he_ takes a mortal wound, _she_ is invulnerable, and it was a spear wound in their legend.”  
  
More projectiles peppered the sky, stones and spears and spells alike, only to be intercepted by their Servants, the action causing both Jacob and Ko to wince. Right, that was under control for now. “Captain Ching, can we outrun them?”  
  
“ _Gai wu._ We’re almost in irons and they’ve got oars. So unless one of you wants to get out and push? No.” The Rider grimaced as she spun the wheel hard right, the ship turning faster than a vehicle its size had any right to as a vibrant burst of magic plunged down into the water ahead of where its bow had pointed. “I will try to get us out of irons, but the winds are against us.”  
  
“Then we’ll have to fight,” Ritsuka surmised.  
  
“If we can take down Heracles,” Jacob panted, hand digging into his uniform. “We may be able to get them to back off?”  
  
“Cu, Tell, keep us covered. Jacob, Ko, we’ll need your Servants.” Ko nodded sharply, and Jacob gave a thumbs up. “Caster, please dissipate to save power; Adam - charge up Saber and Lancer.”  
  
Another speck in the sky began to grow and Mash surged forward. Ritsuka ignored it, she would handle it.  
  
“Keep your last command seal to charge up anyone that’s running low. Ko, be ready to dump them into Fionn, keep an eye out and spot for him.” He paused at the crash of the boulder against Mash’s shield, “When they get closer, we’ll stay near Mash so she can defend. Jacob, can Saber stall Heracles?”  
  
“They–”  
  
A familiar roar became audible, fading into existence. For once, it didn’t bring relief. Ritsuka snapped, “Jacob-!”  
  
The knight was already moving as the American called out, “Saber-!”  
  
Ritsuka grabbed the arms of Bennett and Ko, neither of whom had moved as quickly as he’d wanted them to; Ko’s mouth was frozen in a grit-toothed grin, her eyes locked on the incoming Servant, while Bennett had the arm Ritsuka hadn’t grabbed holding Abigail tightly to his side. He pulled them as far away from Heracles as he could on the confined spaces of the deck, closer to Mash and Ching Shih at the bow. Adam had fallen to the floor, hands scrabbling to find purchase on the deck.  
  
Like a mountain of anger and rage, the son of Zeus was on the deck. His roar was like thunder, the ship itself quaking beneath them. Saber drew their sword back, and Jacob held up his hand even as he staggered alongside the other masters.  
  
“Ada-” Ritsuka started to shout.  
  
Twin flares of red light erupted from Adam’s left hand, and the ruined pauldron in Saber’s armor fixed itself in a flash of Spiritrons, crackles of crimson lightning arcing across the Servant’s blade. At their side, his fiancée’s Lancer’s spear glowed a soft blue-white, an unfelt wind blowing through his long blonde hair, his mantle billowing around him.  
  
Heracles charged, Saber meeting his blow head on with a teeth jarring sword strike. Two strikes in, Ritsuka was certain that Saber could at least stall the Berserker. A glance as he grabbed Jacob’s sleeve, pulling the man further away from the fighting even as he called out to the other Masters, “Take cover!”  
  
As the others scrambled behind crates or what cover they could find, Jacob limped alongside him.  
  
“Ritsuka–” Glancing over at the mention of his name, Chaldea’s Master found the other Master struggling to stay upright under the tumult of the battle, his eyes bloodshot, and one of his hands all but burrowed into his chest. “Can Tell shoot the sword out of his hands?”  
  
That brought Ritsuka’s thoughts up short, if just for a moment as he tried to understand the reasoning behind the question, “... why?”  
  
“Saber’s Phantasm–” A shockwave sent the ship shaking, their balance nearly giving out. Heat splashed across their skin as magic blasts exploded around the ship. “It can take a lot of lives, but if he blocks–”  
  
“Right.” Mind already whirring, Ritsuka looked back out to the deck of the ship, the knight freely trading blows with the grey giant. Their attacks were ineffective, and Heracles was almost exclusively focused on Saber… “Cu! Set up! Mash, Lancer, can you guard the ship-?”  
  
A briefly raised hand was all he got from Fionn before the man pulled a Sailor Neptune, torrential spirals of water surging around him just in time to disperse a barrage of pink energy bolts. Mash gave Ritsuka a simple, grim nod, and she and the Lancer moved to the opposite ends of the ship.  
  
That quick acknowledgement was all Ritsuka needed even as he maneuvered to keep as much space between himself and the dueling Servants as he could. “Do it! Saber, stall him! Tell, set him up!”  
  
Sparks flew as a chorus of acknowledgements met the orders, Saber’s blade grinding against the slab of stone that was Heracles’ weapon.  
  
Hot stone and splinters flew as the two clashed, a red-hot shard glancing against Ritsuka’s uniform even as he moved to keep an eye on them as well as the approaching Argo. The fight couldn’t go on too long, even now he could see both Jacob and Ko starting to flag from the efforts their Servants were going through. The sun was on its way down, but unfortunately it was on the other side of them from the Argo, so they couldn’t use that as a way to blind them and reduce their accuracy.  
  
The blades of the two titans locked for a moment, an angry roar escaping _both_ of them as Saber levered their blade one way and then shifted their footing–  
  
 _‘Master!’_ Cu’s voice rang over the link.  
  
“Saber!” Ritsuka snapped out, the commands clipped. There wasn’t enough time for him to explain; he had to trust that they’d know what to do, "Tell!”  
  
With a grinding screech, Saber threw both of their locked weapons upward, unbalancing themself as well as Heracles, who roared again.  
  
 **“Apfel Schießen!”**  
  
Two resounding shots slammed into the tip of the massive slab of stone in the giant’s hands like thunder, sending it spiraling out of Heracles’ hand-  
  
“Cu!”  
  
Flames erupted across the deck even as Saber leapt backwards, a massive hand of straw enveloping the son of Zeus and lifting the struggling demigod high-!  
  
 **“Wicker Man!”**  
  
“Jacob! Saber!”  
  
“Right!” The pair chorused in harsh unison, Saber leaping into position and the seals on the back of the pale man’s hand burning bright. Red lightning exploded into existence, the electric buzz of power in Ritsuka’s ears and dancing across his skin as Saber’s helmet dropped, their sword held high.  
  
A blonde young woman was underneath the helmet, a vicious grin on her oddly-familiar face, her tightly bound hair tumbling in the vortex of her own power. Wicker Man threw Heracles into its cage even as the Servant roared.  
  
“Captain! Get the Argo in line with Sabers attack!”  
  
“By my command seal-!” out of the corner of his eye, Ritsuka could see the veins bulging on Jacob’s face and arm, eyes bloodshot, with a fierce grin to match his Servants in spite of his obvious pain. Something to worry about later. The enemy ship had closed in the intervening time, magic flying and its crew visible from the deck, but even the hard turn Ching Shih was making wasn’t going to get them in line.  
  
“Fionn!” Ko roared raggedly, snapping off a command seal. “The Argo! Put ‘em where Saber wants ‘em!”  
  
 **“Clarent–!”** Saber’s voice was harsh even as power bellowed from her, the column of crimson power stabbing the sky and with the descending sun, seeming to darken the very heavens.  
  
 **“Mac an Luin!”**  
  
Heracles threw himself around within the Wicker Man, but the flames were engulfing it as it wobbled in place, and Jacob’s voice was ragged as he shouted, “–kill Heracles as many times as you can in a single strike!”  
  
 **“Blood–!”**  
  
Ritsuka could see the ocean itself rise to move the Argo behind Wicker Man, and as a multicolored mass of prana blasted from Jacob’s outstretched hand to envelop and be absorbed by Saber, Ritsuka himself shouted, “Cu! Trigger Wickerman at the same instant! By my Command Seal!"  
  
 **"ARTHAAAAAAAAA!"**  
  
The crackling, screaming pillar of power and death was brought down with Saber’s blade even as Wicker Man itself fell, bits of its structure already ripped apart by Heracles’ efforts.  
  
Hands raised, Ritsuka protected his face from the sheer pressure of the attack, physical and otherwise as Wicker Man was consumed in the brilliant destruction. Ching Shih’s ship shook beneath their feet, the Argo’s sails obliterated in an instant even as a barrier protected the main ship.  
  
The roar of wind and energies was nearly all consuming as even as the Noble Phantasm tapered off, the flames of Wicker Man obscuring sight even more so than the blinding, setting sun behind the Argo. Saber’s crimson attack streaking into the horizon and seeming to stain the sky itself red with the blood of battle.  
  
Ritsuka wasn’t sure who said it over the ringing of his ears, but he shared the sentiment.  
  
“Please let that be enough.”  
  


* * *

  
**_Bennett_**  
  
It wasn’t.  
  
Deep in his heart of hearts, he _knew_ it wasn’t enough. This wasn’t Saber Alter hooked up to a Grail, this was Mordred—and wasn’t _that_ a nasty surprise, feeling Secret of Pedigree in action, learning just how deep the Phantasm’s mental hooks bit—running on the magical equivalent of a hand-cranked generator. Powerful as the Knight of Rebellion was, the lack of a capable Master all but guaranteed that Heracles wouldn’t fall.  
  
As the dust cleared, the mighty Berserker’s corpse came alight from within, an ugly, bloody glow piercing the dusk and igniting some of the _Argo_ ’s broken boards. His ragged and scorched flesh bubbled, steaming, a new arm and leg growing back as Heracles pulled himself upright and _roared_.  
  
The sonic wave crashed into Bennett, forcing him to stagger back and hold onto the ship’s railing just to stay upright, his other arm holding Abigail steady beside him. The others weren’t so lucky: Ritsuka barely stayed upright due to Mash holding him steady. Indy and Ko had fallen to the deck, her polearm not even useful as a crutch as she tried and failed to keep them both upright. Dory leaned back against the center mast, barely pulling himself back to his feet. Mordred had already returned to spirit form, but the damage was done: Dory looked like death warmed over-  
  
A dull growl from Heracles ripped Bennett’s attention straight back to the monster of a man, who had turned towards their ship. Turned towards _Dory_ , whose Saber had taken so many of his lives in one blow.  
  
The Berserker reached down and gripped the makeshift ‘hilt’ of his massive stone axe-sword, ripping it free from where it had been embedded in the hull of the _Argo_ with no effort, and advanced on their ship. The water froze beneath his feet as he strode toward them; _Medea’s work_ , some distant part of Bennett numbly noted.  
  
It was a slow, inexorable march, and Bennett realized it was because _they had nothing left_.  
  
And despite his madness, Heracles _knew_.  
  
“Tell-san!” Ritsuka yelled, pointing down at Heracles.  
  
“ **Apfel Schießen**!” For the second time that day, William Tell released his Noble Phantasm, the unfailing shot that _will_ hit the target. The bolt flew towards Heracles, unerring, unwavering. It struck the Berserker in the eye—  
  
It shattered.  
  
The Son of Zeus did not blink. He did not pause. He did not flinch. He paid absolutely no mind to the _Released First Arrow of Faith_ , because even at its strongest, it could not pierce the **God Hand**.  
  
This was the overwhelming might of the greatest hero of Ancient Greece, even in what was likely his _weakest_ class.  
  
Bennett looked towards Ritsuka, hoping beyond all hope that the Last Master of Chaldea had a _plan_. Something, anything from that absurd wellspring of grit he had available to him. And in doing so, he made the fatal mistake: he took his eyes off of his enemy.  
  
A whisper of a breeze ran through his hair, and when his eyes returned to Heracles’ approach, he saw nothing. A moment later, he registered the sound of something landing on the ship’s deck. Bennett’s heart skipped a beat, and he turned.  
  
“Saber-!” Dory pushed off of the mast, his pale skin a splotchy mess of sweat and feverish red as he staggered back, ragged desperation in his voice. “Stall him! Mash! _Fionn!”_  
  
Heracles stood on the deck of the ship, approaching the Master of the Servant that had so gravely wounded him. He loomed over Dory, the promise of death in his every movement even as Mordred began to reappear in golden light.  
  
The Demi-Servant darted forward, interposing herself between Heracles and Dory—  
  
 **“Lord—!”**  
  
The Berserker’s sword crashed down. Heracles’ next blow struck the Shielder aside with contemptuous ease. Mordred still hadn’t reformed—!  
  
Before any of them could act, Heracles brought his sword around again—  
  
His vision fuzzed as the world listed sideways and his leg gave out from under him. Bennett fell to the deck, suddenly unable to stay upright as dark fuzz crept in from the corners of his eyes. He pushed himself up, and the world came back into focus, even as it tried to spin in clockwise motion.  
  
Heracles’ sword was caught in a downswing, shuddering and shaking as the Berserker tried, and _failed_ , to free it. _Something_ held it in place, an eerie oil-slick stain on the surface of reality that was wrong, wrongwrongwrong _wrongwrongwrong_ —  
  
The Berserker howled with rage and ripped his sword free, carving through whatever unknowable nothingness stayed his killing blow. He turned towards Bennett - no. Not him.  
  
One arm extended, her hand shaking, Abigail stared up at the Son of Zeus. Berserker and Foreigner met eyes.  
  
“Ygnaiih,” Abigail murmured.  
  
Bennett wanted to cry out, to tell her to stop. But even as he tried, the world swam and he hit the deck again, felt the trail of something wet sliding down his face. His knee, his bad knee, spasmed and froze up as a horrific sensation he could only compare to metal spike, so cold it burned, stabbed through the joint, spasming and twitching beneath him.  
  
“Ygnaiih, thflthkh’ngha. O silver key held in my hands, come forth from nothingness, and open the lock...”  
  
Reality _shredded_ as a great keyhole carved itself into the space beside Heracles, the outlined air rippling with that soap-bubble shimmer. Then another keyhole emerged, and another, and another. They caged the Berserker in, cutting off every possible avenue of escape. Wherever Heracles looked, the keyholes hovered, waiting. _Whispering_. His skull felt tight against his brain, every word squeezing harder and harder until he could hardly _think_ over the sound of his own pulse, roaring painfully in his ears.  
  
“Oh Father, my God—”  
  
A spike of molten agony lanced through his eyes, and half of the world went dark, while the other fuzzed out into an incomprehensible mess. Panic gripped at his heart, and for a second he forgot to breathe. He couldn’t see. _He couldn’t see_. The pain was still there, intensifying, twisting his innards into knots as the taste of copper filled his mouth. But all of that was secondary to the fact that _he couldn’t see_.  
  
Heracles roared and thrashed, dashing his blade against the keyholes; he could hear it, that strange echoing _nothingness_ where the demigod’s blade impacted the tears in reality. But even that din could not drown out the Foreigner’s rising volume as she intoned, “-beyond the sleep of roses, and arrive at the final gate!”  
  
As one, every keyhole came alight, their interiors blazing bright and brilliant. Even with his fading sight, no matter where Bennett looked, there was no escaping it. Even as the world faded into light, even as Heracles howled a sound no human throat should make, he could not stop from being drawn in, falling, sinking—  
  
 _The expanse played out before him, countless points of light glimmering in the distance. As far as the eye could see, stars shone in the darkness, endless, unceasing, neverending-  
  
-the vault of the heavens shifted, warping suddenly, coiling around him. The stars spun in an impossible orbit, the cosmos themselves turning, searching. Deepest black writhed and twisted, resolving into a shape that he could not deny. He gazed long into this abyss transfixed mesmerized-  
  
-and staring back at him was a single baleful blue eye growing larger and larger as it approached chasing away the hungering cold of the void replacing it with a heat that threatened to sear his very soul it stared and he could not look away could not avert his gaze from it from the endless mouths set into its surface screaming their burning hate into the cosmos-  
  
-and then he was falling, falling into that endless blue, further and further away from the-_  
  
 **”Qliphoth Rhizome.”**  
  


* * *

  
**_Spencer_**  
  
For the first time in his life, he understood why the cries of Heracles were rendered as tiny black boxes. The sound was indescribable.  
  
The ship shook and shuddered when Saber released their Noble Phantasm, red light seeping in through the gaps in the ceiling above him. He balled his fists and he closed his eyes and did his level best to just _breath_. A flash of memory, a piece of advice learned in high school from an online comedy web series. What do you do if you’re about to die? You live... for just a little while longer. Moments later, another roar from Heracles made him wince and hope really hard he wasn’t about to die.  
  
A roar that was suddenly and unexpectedly cut off.  
  
Silence filled the cabin as Spencer got his breathing under control. No, not silence. He could still hear the sound of the waves crashing against the hull, the creaking of the ship as it drifted in the water.  
  
And nothing else.  
  
“So uh,” he said shakily, “did we win?”  
  
The only answer he received were three knocks against the closed door of the cabin, each knock fainter than the last. Each knock _lower_ than the last.  
  
And there was nothing from Ching Shih.  
  
He sighed, gritted his teeth, and rolled out of the bed, landing on the floor with a thump. “Ow,” he muttered. His hands were numb, and he couldn’t properly get his legs under him. He hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad. Up until now it had just been pins and needles, the tips of his fingers and toes going numb. Ching Shih had been incredibly reluctant to let loose after the first use of her ship’s weapons.  
  
 _I hadn’t even used the safeword,_ Spencer thought to himself.  
  
He got to the door the only way he could. A crawling shuffle that took a full minute longer than it should have.  
  
The knocks didn’t repeat.  
  
His hand slipped off the knob of the door on the first try, and he fell to the ground, biting back several swears. He wasn’t a masochist, flogging was not his thing, and he fully believed every threat his servant had delivered up to this point.  
  
“Alright, we can do this. We can open a door.” He rolled onto his stomach and managed to get to a kneeling position using the door itself to lean against and stabilize. He got a hand on the knob. He dug in and twisted. The door clicked open, just barely.  
  
“Oh son of a-” he gasped as the thing he was leaning against stopped providing support.  
  
There was no one there.  
  
He screwed his eyes shut as a white haze drifted across his vision, a spike of pain flaring behind his eyes. The pain receded just a little, and he blinked the tears out of his eyes, but when he opened them it was gone, and for all he knew it had never been there in the first place.  
  
He shook his head. Commentary took effort, and he needed to get above deck. Mumbling sarcastically could wait until he knew what the hell was going on. The railing at the side of the stairs helped him get to the deck above in a manner slightly less pathetic than when he’d first started. Every step was a labor, but it was a manageable one. He was almost able to crawl as the circulation got back into his legs, though the persistent sense of pins and needles refused to subside.  
  
It took moments for his eyes to adjust to the light of above decks, and what he saw explained… nothing.  
  
Most of the group had collapsed to the deck like puppets whose strings had been cut; Toby was closest to him, and he had all of half a second to process that fact before he vanished in a rainbow strobe of light.  
  
Dory was the next closest to him, and he seemed to be trying to finger paint on the deck.  
  
“Dory? Dory, my man, you okay?” he asked, but didn’t get anything in the manner of an actual response. His friend was fixated on his task, and even a nudge of the shoulder wouldn’t dissuade him.  
  
Ko lay on her side in the shade, hugging her knees to her chest and muttering as Fionn hovered over her, brushing her hair out of her face. So they were fine and-  
  
Wait.  
  
He looked back at Dory.  
  
That wasn’t paint that wasn’t paint that wasn’t paint-  
  
“He’s fine. He’s gonna be fine. We’re all going to be fine. Everything is fine.”  
  
 _‘Everything is fine’_ he repeated to himself.  
  
Floating nearby was the other ship, drifting away without any apparent guidance or sign of activity. The one person on the deck who seemed cognizant was Fionn, who Spencer managed to get an entire second of eye contact out of before he smiled wearily and vanished.  
  
“What the ffffflip happened here?” Spencer asked, looking around for his servant.  
  
“... oh hell…” he muttered, as he looked at the back of his left hand. “Ching Shih, Materialize.”  
  
A seal vanished in a flash of red light, and his servant manifested, unconscious and slumped against the ship’s wheel. A fresh wave of exhaustion swept over him, and he immediately regretted it as he found himself on his knees, his nerves screaming.  
  
He looked at his hand again, a single seal remaining. He considered for a moment, if it was worth the risk to use it to make her wake up.  
  
“I am the girl who arranges the blocks,” Ko announced abruptly, followed by a giggle that made his stomach twist even before he heard it taper off into a sob.  
  
Spencer stared at Ko for a solid ten seconds before he was able to compose himself again. “Oh you can keep that…” he whispered under his breath.  
  
He looked back over the deck, Dory scribbling and muttering.  
  
He grabbed hold of the ship’s wheel instead, and began to spin it in an attempt to get the ship pointed _away_. The only thought on his mind was creating distance. It didn’t matter where they were going, as long as it was far away from here.  
  
“Good idea, but you’ll need to trim the sails if-”  
  
Spencer screamed as Fionn’s voice echoed in his ear. “Don’t _do_ that!”  
  
The only reply he received was Fionn’s laughter.


	5. Collateral Damage | Canon Rating: A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between Chapters 4 and 5

**Collateral Damage  
Canon Rating: A**

* * *

**_Dr. Romani Archaman_**  
  
“Cut the feed! **Now!** ”  
  
Every one of Chaldea’s technicians scrambled to kill visual and audio from the Singularity as their equipment registered a steep dip in Bennett’s vitals. They succeeded, barely, and all eyes remained glued to what readings of the Masters they still had.  
  
“Do we still have Rayshift capability?” Roman asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady, even as his heart beat a hundred miles a minute.  
  
“We do,” da Vinci replied, not bothering to hide her concerned tone. “What’s the plan?”  
  
“The moment the pull on Bennett drops to safe levels, yank him.” His eyes scanned across the readings. Heart rate, blood pressure, hormone levels. Blood volume. “Send Medea to prep the operating theatre, and get every Servant with a Luck of C or lower as far away from the OR as possible.”  
  
Roman pushed his chair back and got up, making for the exit of the control center. He ran as fast as he could, taking the stairs down as quickly as was safe—it would do no good if the only doctor left cracked his skull open on the stairwell—before arriving at his destination. The first door to the mission room opened, and as Roman waited for the Rayshift to complete, he prepared the stretcher and triage kit set in the entryway for times like this.  
  
“Rayshift is happening now,” da Vinci said, her voice coming through the speaker on his wristband. “Completion in three… two… one. Opening the doors now, Roman.”  
  
True to da Vinci’s word, the doors slid open, and Roman pulled the stretcher behind him as he ran to Bennett’s Coffin. The Coffin adjacent to his, set aside for a Servant, registered an occupant as well, and Roman tapped a button on each of their sides.  
  
“da Vinci, spin up the failsafe mana reactor and get Servant Foreigner hooked up to it. Meuniere, get these coffins open!”  
  
“Right away boss!” Jingle Abel Meuniere, the chief staff officer responsible for Coffin maintenance and operation, worked his magic in an instant, and both Coffins slid open. In the one on Roman’s right, he saw the young Servant girl, Abigail Williams. She was pale, her complexion clammy, murmuring soundless words and holding both hands over her forehead as she rocked back and forth on her knees. She gasped when she saw him, and astralized, disappearing in a black-purple haze. He turned his attention to the other Coffin, and had to suppress a flinch.  
  
By Dr. Romani’s assessment, the 49th Master Candidate was in bad shape. He stared blankly into nothing, jaw hanging ever so slightly ajar. Blood, both dried and fresh, ran down from his nostrils, stained his teeth crimson, and painted the right side of his face in a vermillion curtain. The warm dampness he felt lowering Bennett onto the stretcher directed his attention to the man’s trousers, the right leg dyed crimson and soaked through.  
  
“Does Medea have the operating theatre prepped?” Dr. Roman asked, raising up the stretcher and steering Bennett through Chaldea.  
  
“OR is prepped, and Medea took the liberty of preparing several units of O Negative blood,” da Vinci informed him. “How is his condition?”  
  
“Severe bleeding from right leg and orbital socket, possible hemorrhage and cranial trauma; bloody spittle indicates possibility of internal bleeding.” Dr. Roman wheeled the stretcher into the awaiting elevator, already open and ready to bring them up to the right floor. While the elevator moved, he pulled out da Vinci’s diagnostic tool, a cylindrical Mystic Code that would perform Structural Analysis for diagnostic purposes. He placed one end of the device directly over Bennett’s heart, pressed a small switch, and awaited the onrush of information as the spell cast—  
  
Dr. Roman flinched back from the stretcher, the Mystic Code clattering to the floor. His eyes went wide as information filtered into his mind, broken and fragmented where he had expected clean, if complex. Reaching back into his pocket, Dr. Roman retrieved a penlight, which he maneuvered to shine into Bennett’s right eye, angling the beam through his pupil.  
  
Something inside of Bennett’s eye _shimmered_ in the light. Something _blue_.  
  
“Medea!” Dr. Roman spoke into his wristband. “Ready the ophthalmoscope and get the vitrectomy kit from the surgical cabinet. And prep a biohazard containment vessel.”  
  
“Understood, Dr. Roman,” the Caster replied, voice endlessly calm. “The OR is sterile and ready to receive you.”  
  
“ETA one minute,” Dr. Roman said as the elevator doors slid open. True to his word, almost exactly one minute later, he pushed the stretcher to the doors of the OR, where Medea stood ready to receive, her usual robe and hood replaced by surgical scrubs. “Get him prepped for me, I need to scrub up!”  
  
“It will be my pleasure.” Medea offered him a patient nod and took Bennett’s stretcher into the operating room.  
  
Dr. Roman shucked his bloodied clothes, and paused for a deep breath before scrubbing up. The last time he’d had to perform surgery with so few helpers… well. He knew that his time spent with Médecins Sans Frontiers would help some day.  
  
He just never expected it to be put to use _here_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Material Acquired
> 
> [Tainted Vitreous]  
> A bluish mixture of blood and vitreous fluid removed from the eye of one who has gazed long into the abyss. This substance was left behind when the abyss gazed back into them.
> 
> Perhaps, this is a demonstration of the Great Old Ones’ caprice. A blessing denied, for those with the temerity to transcend the Boundary. Or a curse avoided, for those who dare venture outside the Domain.


	6. Okeanos | Chapter V

**Okeanos Part V**

* * *

_**Jacob**  
  
Eyes like stars._  
  
The first conscious breath burned and sent Jacob coughing, turning onto his side and covering his mouth.  
  
He’d tried to gasp upon waking, which had sent spit down the wrong tube and now here he was, trying not to choke on his own stupidity.  
  
“Mm.” Cracking an eye open was a mistake, stars of thousands of colors danced in his vision even as the light burned.  
  
Scrunching his eyes shut, Jacob took a slow breath and tried to take stock of himself and remember what happened. They’d been attacked by Jason. They’d been fighting. Mordred had attacked with he- _his_ Noble Phantasm. Heracles. _Right,_ fucking _Heracles._ Which is why they’d pulled out all the stops…  
  
He was on the floor? His head _hurt_ , like he’d hit it with a cymbal from the inside and his head had been the thing to keep ringing. The taste of vanilla and papercuts, ash and rubbing alcohol all clung to the inside of his mouth and throat, and he ached down to his bones. The cloth on his hands-...  
  
Cloth? Hands?  
  
Rubbing his fingers together, Jacob was able to figure that his hands were wrapped in rough cloth? And sore. More so than even his head. And he could still hear the waves and the creaking of the ship, still smell the ocean, so definitely still the ship but…  
  
Opening his eyes carefully, he determined that his hands _had_ been bandaged, especially given the blots of reddish brown at the tips.  
  
The world wasn’t quite stabbing icepicks into Jacob’s head via his retinas anymore, so he took the opportunity to confirm that, yes, he was in the hold. The others were around him, laid out with their heads on some of the spoils from Magellan, seemingly intact but… unconscious…?  
  
The others had seen it too–  
  
 _–eyes like stars and the writhing endless plane that was where Abby had stood but was standing on the deck–_  
  
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jacob focused on his own breathing, and the thudding of his heartbeat in his ears, each beat suddenly loud and painful.  
  
Pressing roughly at his own temples, Jacob groaned quietly, laying down as he tried to get the throbbing under control, focusing on the pain it caused in his hands and his own breathing and heartbeat rather than the… _mess_ of a memory-  
  
 _-on the endless white deck astride a ship that was the earth and the cosmos the picture of a picture of a picture that was still more vivid than technicolor-_  
  
Right. Breathing. The rocking of the ship. Soothing rocking. Like grandma’s chair. Back and forth, creak and groan.  
  
Time passed as he counted each breath, finding the rhythm between them and the ship as he waited for the pain to ease.  
  
Next steps? Find out what was going on. Who was conscious? Who was moving the ship? Jason? All the situation notes.  
  
Despite the pain, Jacob forced himself to sit up, cracking open one eye, then the other, squinting even against the dim lights of the hold. Checking visually, he was able to confirm that at least everyone was breathing. All the physical ones at least. Indy, Ko, Ritz, Mash… no Spence or Toby though…? Right, Spence hadn’t seen it and Toby… maybe he’d been immune…? Or dead.  
  
Cold clutched at his chest.  
  
Not now. Find out, deal with it if that’s the case.  
  
Struggling to his feet, he had to prop himself up against the wall for a bit, balance entirely shot.  
  
“‘If it t’k m’ sea legs ‘m gonna be pissed.” Jacob croaked while forcing himself towards the stairs.  
  
No chains or anything, despite the paranoia in his head. The mild rocking of the boat alone was enough to unbalance him, so Jacob kept a hand on the rail of the stairs the entire way up, clutching to it like a lifeline. How could he stand straight on this unreal floor when _she could stand across the world-_  
  
Stopping briefly at the door, Jacob just leaned against it, trying to force down the thoughts and… compartmentalize. Parse. Bite size it.  
  
She’d said those words that slipped so easily from his head, and he let them drift away. Light had shone from her, as… gates had opened up? No, more like… the fabric had been pushed down for water to pool-? No but it was closer than gates-  
  
The thought hurt some, but regardless, there’d been an attack of something from outside of normal spacetime in a way that should’ve been an optical illusion but wasn’t.  
  
… he was pretty sure there’d been tentacles?  
  
Abby… had done something where she’d opened up a doorway, but the door itself was everything he knew and when it’d lifted, it’d left all of them staring through it to whatever it was on the other side… but she’d… pushed Heracles through to that ae _therial sea–?_  
  
Veering away from the thought process with a shake of his head, Jacob tried not to think on it too hard, because even that much had brought the ringing back into his bones.  
  
Focus. Forward.  
  
With some effort, he found the handle to the door and stepped out onto the deck, eyes cracking open briefly and able to confirm through the searing light that yes, it was Ching Shih’s ship still, and they weren’t on the Argo or whatever.  
  
That confirmation out of the way, he closed his eyes again and shut the door behind him.  
  
“Hey you, you’re finally awake.”  
  
Jacob blinked against the brilliant sunlight even as he brought up a middle finger in the general direction of Spence’s voice. “Fus Roh Dah.”  
  
Spencer flashed him a grit-toothed grin. “You have not killed nearly enough dragons to shout at me, yet.”  
  
“I’ll get there, Stormcloak.” Coughing and then swallowing around the dry throat, Jacob rubbed his forehead, eyes still shut tight, “Right… what… what’s our status?”  
  
“Better, now that someone else is awake.” The voice crackled over the com on his wrist.  
  
“Mm.” Jacob _really_ wanted caffeine right now. “Descriptive.”  
  
Da Vinci’s tone didn’t seem offended. “We have two functional masters and three functional servants, with only one of them actually being a pair. Jason is nowhere to be seen but Heracles is confirmed defeated. We’re off the track of Drake. You were unconscious for two days. Lucky you!”  
  
Okay, _actually_ descriptive. “Thanks…” Jacob murmured, trying to process all of that and what it meant.  
  
“How are you feeling?”  
  
“Bad. Need some water. And food, even if my stomach doesn’t agree.” His tone was clipped and rough, working through the deep grinding in his bones and searing pain of the light, “But doesn’t feel like anything permanent on my end at least. Nightmares probably, though. Toby?”  
  
“Bennett…” Roman’s voice came over the comms, hanging for a moment before admitting, “Is in Chaldea.”  
  
“... in a good way, or a bad way?” Jacob asked carefully, a cold pit in his stomach, “I wouldn’t be happy if he’s dead but I’d rather know it now than worrying you’re hiding it for later.”  
  
“Alive. But he’s not in the best condition. He’s been showing signs of waking up soon.”  
  
Relief, and some of the tension that was even letting Jacob stand eased out. Not taking any chances with it, he leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on the deck. “Thanks. I ‘ppreciate it.”  
  
A brief moment of emptiness before he called out with his thoughts. _< Mordred?>_  
  
Silence was his response.  
  
His heart rate spiked, his prince–  
  
The director of Chaldea’s voice was calm and clearly an attempt at being soothing. “What do you remember?”  
  
Spaces wi _thin space but_ also above and _below and outside–_  
  
Jacob applied pressure to his forehead, forcing down the intense headache as well as the panic in the back of his mind not getting the boisterous, energetic response he’d gotten accustomed to occasionally intruding on his thoughts. “Not much useful stuff. Brain’s still trying to catch up and process things.”  
  
“The memetic hazard.” It was Da Vinci that spoke over the commlink this time.  
  
“Yeah.” He realized belatedly that they’d explained the concept to them not too long ago, “I… we probably want to get baseline data about our heads… headspace? Whatever ones we reasonably can. That way we can compare in case this happens again.”  
  
“I’ll schedule it for after everyone returns.”  
  
“I…” The bearded man trailed off, thought being washed away in the tides of ache in his head and lost into those endless spaces. It felt like he needed to get it out of his head but he already had and… it was lost again. He wanted caffeine and food and a hug“Sorry… I’ve got a throbbing headache. Is there anything we need to be doing?”  
  
“No,” was the thankfully succinct and calm response from the director, “At this stage, we’re waiting for enough people to wake up for us to consider going after Drake again. Take the time to rest.”  
  
“Then’s time for food. And water. Both’d be nice.”  
  
Spencer nodded. “I’ll take you to ‘Caster of Kirkcaldy,’” he said, putting air quotes around the title, “see if he knows anything for a hangover, because I certainly don’t.”  
  


* * *

  
 ** _Bennett_**  
  
 _He was in an endless expanse of nothingness. Grey-white covered the sky as far as he could see, a plainness and uniformity that far surpassed the May Gray and June Gloom of his West Coast childhood. Bennett turned, looking for some sign of where he stood, anything. It was only on his third step that he noticed the sound of splashing accompanying his footsteps. He looked down—  
  
Vertigo threatened to take him, and he fell to hands and knees as he stared down into the watery surface beneath him. In that mirror sheen, he saw no reflection. Instead, he beheld the cosmos themselves; the Milky Way splashed across the ‘reflected’ sky, stars and galaxies and nebulae shimmering in a vast, unknowable distance. And at the center of it all, a great blue star, its shine so great as to eclipse all those around it. He leaned in closer to the water’s surface; if only he could get a closer look, a clearer glimpse of—  
  
“Don’t do that.”  
  
The sudden voice shocked him out of his thoughts and sent him flat on his ass as he tried to stand and face them, much to Bennett’s shame. His eyes fell upon the only person that could possibly have been speaking to him in this place, one that he finally recognized with the context.  
  
His Servant—no, wait. This wasn’t _his _Abby. This was the true Abigail Williams, one of the two Silver Keys wandering the cosmos together. The keyhole upon her forehead, clearly empty and yet leading to nowhere in particular, was clue enough as to her nature.  
  
“Don’t do what?” Bennett asked, confused.  
  
“It’s dangerous to look down.” Abigail gestured to the vast, unspeakable cosmos swirling in the water beneath her before taking a step forward, her footsteps sending ripples through the image and dissipating it entirely. “There.”  
  
A part of him desperately wanted the water to settle, to stare long into the vastness of space. A more rational part of his mind smacked the traitorous part and shoved it into a box, burying it in the back of his mind. He knew better than to stare long into the abyss.  
  
“I know,” Abigail said suddenly, shocking him.  
  
“Did I—”  
  
“No,” she interrupted, shaking her head, “but. You dream the sleep of roses.”  
  
His mind filled in the rest. ‘Move beyond the sleep of roses, and arrive at the final gate’. Her Noble Phantasm. He hadn’t just gotten a tiny glimpse of the damn thing. He may have been half-blind at the time and barely able to perceive the world around him, but he still knew what he’d seen.  
  
He still remembered the heat of that great star, screaming with a million unheard voices into the uncaring cosmos.  
  
But if this was a dream…?  
  
“Did it hurt?” Abigail asked suddenly, pulling him from his thoughts. Bennett found himself shaking his head mechanically, realizing as he did that he was telling a lie. From the way the girl’s dead expression shifted into a smile that failed to reach her eyes, he knew she could tell. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that.”  
  
“What happened, happened,” Bennett said, trying to keep any heat out of his voice. “It was Abby who did it, not you.”  
  
And now the smile was real, Abigail’s eyes seeming to glimmer. Or perhaps they actually _were _glimmering. He wasn’t sure he was sane enough to know the difference anymore.  
  
“You can tell!” Her voice seemed to have real excitement in it. But an instant later, the light faded from her eyes, and her expression dimmed into a frown. “You’re going to wake up soon. Um… will I see you again?”  
  
“This is part of the Dream Cycle, isn’t it?” Bennett found himself asking, to which Abigail gave a very hesitant nod. He offered the girl a small smile in response. “Then you will. I promise.”  
  
In the blink of an eye Abigail stood in front of him, one pinky extended from her hand.  
  
“Pinky swear!”  
  
Bennett couldn’t help but smile as he offered his hand back, and the two clasped pinkies in a show of their promise.  
  
“There. You promised.” Abigail waved her hand, and light shone to the side of the two of them. Bennett turned to see brilliant, ephemeral stairs shimmer into existence, leading up to a great, wrought-iron gate. “I’ll see you soon.”  
  
Bennett nodded. “It’s a promise,” he said, turning back to Abigail with a smile, only to blink. She was already gone.  
  
Only the stairs remained.  
  
He turned towards the shimmering stairway. Well. There was only one thing left to do then, wasn’t there?_  
  


* * *

  
Droning beeps filled Bennett’s ears as he blinked awake, feeling roughly like he’d been crushed by a steamroller, or something else vaguely for just how _shit_ he felt. He couldn’t see anything on his right, and what little he could on his left was a vague white blur. When he went to reach up to his face to try and see if his glasses were still there or not, he felt the press of an IV in the back of his right hand. He reached up with his left instead, and met resistance there too. It wasn’t an IV this time, though. It was warm, and fluffy.  
  
And it was suddenly shifting and whimpering as a hot, wet tongue attacked his face.  
  
“Ja—” Bennett broke into a fit of coughs, his throat choosing right that instant to protest. He heard something shift to his side, and a moment later a cup of water showed up under him. Slow sips had his throat feeling more like its usual self instead of rough-grit sandpaper, and he turned and squinted his one uncovered eye to try and see who had given him the water.  
  
“Goodman?” Abby asked, answering the question of ‘who’.  
  
“H-how long was I out?” he asked, tilting his mouth up from the dog that was _still_ furiously licking at his face and chin. “Easy girl, easy…!”  
  
He handed the water cup back to Abby, trading it for his glasses, and went about petting the dog, who had finally chosen to stop licking and had now laid her head on his chest.  
  
“I…” Abby blushed, her focus directed rather pointedly at the dog beside Bennett instead of on him. “Did not pay attention, but…”  
  
Now that Bennett could somewhat see properly, he took a closer look at the girl. For all that her Servant status would keep her in peak shape, she still seemed worn down. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and now that Bennett listened for it, he caught the occasional sniffle. Abby’s hair looked tangled and in need of a brush, and she had her teddy bear in a death grip.  
  
If he was being completely frank, the poor kid looked like she’d been put through the wringer.  
  
Bennett wanted to say something to comfort her when the door opened, and Dr. Roman bustled in. His hair was a disheveled, greasy mess, visibly a few shades darker and duller than usual. Dark circles under his eyes belied his fatigue just as much as the coffee mug in his hand, which contrasted sharply with the clearly fresh scrubs he was wearing. He set his mug on the small table beside Bennett’s hospital bed and clicked the button on his tablet.  
  
“You’re awake, good,” Roman said. Even his voice seemed weary, and this all but confirmed Bennett’s suspicions as to _why_ the man’s scrubs were fresh. “You’ve been out for two days. How are you feeling?”  
  
How was he feeling?  
  
“ _Ow._ ”  
  
Dr. Roman didn’t give any particular reaction, instead just offering him a look. “I’m not a miracle worker, Mr. Bennett. I need specifics.”  
  
Specifics. Okay. Right. How did he feel, _specifically_?  
  
Like shit. Like utter shit. Like somebody had chewed him up, spat him out, and then promptly stomped all over what was left of him, just to grind the point home. He didn’t want to try and focus inward, to try and pinpoint what the issues were, because that was just going to make it feel _worse_. It wasn’t bad enough that his mouth could make a passable replacement for sandpaper, or that all of the lights were simultaneously too bright and too dark - everything fuzzy, out of focus, and yet still too crisp and sharp.  
  
It didn’t hurt to breathe, but it still wasn’t pleasant. Even beyond the discomfort of the IV in his right hand, he still felt like he didn’t _want_ to lift his arm. He didn’t want to _move_. Just to test, he tried to see and—  
  
He paused. He couldn’t feel his leg. Bennett pulled himself upright, relief flooding his veins when he could _see_ his leg under the thin hospital blanket, even though he couldn’t _feel_ it.  
  
“Doc,” he started, hesitant. “Why can’t I feel my leg?”  
  
Roman didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled up a stool and sat down, stretching out the motion as long as possible. Having spent more than his fair share of time in doctors’ offices (though thankfully not as the patient), Bennett had a sinking feeling of what was coming.  
  
“Before I get to that, your dog,” Dr. Roman gestured to Jamaica, who stood protectively between Bennett and Dr. Roman, “was put on your bed on a hunch. After the anesthesia wore off, you began convulsing again. On Abigail’s suggestion, we got your dog; the convulsions stopped the moment she was next to you.”  
  
Which made some sense, given that the spawn of Yog-Sothoth was absolutely terrified of dogs, and Abigail’s power came from Yog. It was a smart response to a conceptual assault.  
  
Though that did leave the question of who’d taken the time to read _The Dunwich Horror_... no, stop that, Bennett told himself. He was distracting himself from something important, something that was making the anxiety build in him. The avoidance was obvious, but this wasn’t something he could just _ignore_. He wanted to know. He _needed_ to know _what had happened to him_.  
  
“Dr. Roman. Please,” he said, putting his hand on his dog to try and calm himself. “Just tell me.”  
  
“If you’re sure.” Dr. Roman tapped at his tablet, then turned it to show Bennett. “You were in bad shape after the Rayshift. There was some fault on our part: we had massively underestimated just how much mana Abigail would require to use her Noble Phantasm, largely because of the disparity from her resting state’s cost versus that of Jacob’s Saber. It took a Command Spell to fuel their Noble Phantasm, and it still hurt him. You bore the brunt of Abigail’s Phantasm _raw.”_  
  
Dr. Roman tapped the tablet again.  
  
“The damage was centered on the path of least resistance, any part of you that was already hurt or weakened in some way. Your right eye was already worse than your left. We managed to save your eye, but there may be lasting effects on your vision. As for your leg…” Dr. Roman sighed. “The scar tissue on your leg has, for lack of a better word, rotted. It’s gone through significant necrosis due to od depletion and has actively repelled attempts to heal the physical damage with magecraft. I excised the damaged tissue to stop the spread as best I could, but the damage managed to grow some before I could. You still have your leg, but…” Dr. Roman sighed. “I’m sorry, but given the damage, you will never regain full strength or range of motion.”  
  
He didn’t have a response. Some idle part of his mind was surprised by this, by the complete _lack_ of any reply he had for Doctor Roman. By the way he couldn’t find anything to say, or even if he _did_ have something to say, by the lack of any way to actually say it. He felt… oddly numb. Disconnected.  
  
Oh. This was what shock was like, wasn’t it?  
  
“I… I wish I could stay, but I need to get back to the control center, and…” The doctor shrugged helplessly, sighing. “I know this isn’t easy for you to hear, but I don’t doubt the strength of your spirit. If you need anything, Jeanne d’Arc has been camping outside your door, and I had to stop her from coming in out of concern for your privacy. I think she’d be happy to help with anything you need.”  
  
Dr. Roman picked up his coffee mug and tablet to make his way out of the infirmary, but stopped at the door for a moment. “Abby, could you do an old grown-up a favor and push the red button if you get worried?”  
  
“Y-yes!” Abby nodded fervently, but when the infirmary door slid shut behind Dr. Roman, the mask broke. Her face fell, eyes shining with held tears as she buried her face into his shoulder and his dog’s fur, whispering incomprehensible apologies through her tears. But he did nothing in response.  
  
Bennett could only stare at the wall. He didn’t know what to do.  
  
He didn’t know what he _could_ do, anymore.  
  


* * *

  
 ** _Ko_**  
  
“Time enough at last,” she said, and by the time her eyes were open, she could no longer remember why.  
  
“Not a phrase I know,” a familiar voice responded, “but definitely more coherent than you have been.”  
  
“What the fuck?” she asked, her voice crackling with dehydration as she pulled the blanket over her eyes with a groan and scrunched them back shut. It was just typical of this entire damned idealistic crusade that after eight hours of restless sleep during the night, she’d not only end up slipping into an involuntary afternoon nap, but that said nap wouldn’t even have the decency to finally kill her fucking headache. “How long was I out?”  
  
“Three days,” Dory’s voice continued, moving about around her. “Give or take.”  
  
She froze. “Jesus H. Christ.” Visions of Matou Kariya the living dead man danced in her head as she wriggled her fingers and toes to convince herself she could still feel them. The resulting pinpricks weren’t fun, but they beat the hell out of nothing. “Sorry. Can I at least assume by the fact that we’re alive that you didn’t run into any more Servants?”  
  
“None yet, thankfully. How are you feeling?” A hand touched her wrist before a cup was passed into her grip. Reluctantly, she let the blanket fall with a frown and a squint, and scootched awkwardly to propping herself up in the hammock as best she could. She chugged the warm water and felt her mouth and throat relax in relief immediately, followed by something unclenching in her back. When she finally wiped her mouth, half of the moisture that came away on her hand was drool.  
  
“About as bad as before,” she said, handing the cup back and clearing her throat. “Maybe a little better, actually. How’d you guys stabilize me?”  
  
“You weren’t hurt in the fight…” He sounded uneasy, all of a sudden. “What do you remember?”  
  
Her eyes widened before she could stop them, and not even a moment later they were squinting in pain. “Wait, there was a _fight?”_  
  
“... oh… yeah, that explains some of the confusion. Jason jumped us.”  
  
“There was a fight with _Herakles?!_ And we _lived?”_ Not even the coughing fit that followed could stop her from grinning like a loon. “Dude,” she choked, grabbing Dory’s shoulder, trying and failing to look at him properly, “we f- we _rule._ Or I guess you do, since I passed out.”  
  
“While this is certainly true,” he said with exaggerated pomposity before returning to a more comfortable baseline, putting a hand over hers, “Abby’s the one that actually pulled it off. I was just as out of it as you. _Technically_ we didn’t pass out, but… Lovecraftian bullshit. Remembering less is probably better.”  
  
Ko frowned out of sheer contrarian stubbornness, and cast her mind back, trying to recall literally anything. “... did we sight land, or was that a hallucination?” she asked.  
  
“No, we did.” Dory nodded. “Then we were fighting, Herc got onto the deck, and then things were rough, and Saber did h… their thing, didn’t finish Herc off, and then Abby did hers.” There was a sharp twitch to his hand, and she finally noticed the thin bandages still wrapped around each of his fingers. “It wasn’t fun.”  
  
“I’ll bet.” _Land, there was land, c’mon brain… music, shouting, a shadow, fear, lightning, a face that wasn’t a face, silver and red, folding back-_  
  
“Oh.” Ko blinked, and rubbed her eyes. “I, uh… think I know who Saber is. Does anyone else remember that, or do you want me to keep it on the DL for now?”  
  
He cringed even as he nodded. “As quiet as feasible, yeah.”  
  
“Roger roger.” She stretched. “So… what’s on tap for today? Did El Draque decide to play ball?”  
  
His left eye twitched. “We haven’t gotten to her yet. Fionn was… less than comfortable with using his phantasm while you were out of it.”  
  
 _- **“Mac an Luin!”**  
  
a rush, a roar, the sails of the other ship rising over her pulsing head in a spray of salt and - no, hang on, he probably means Fintan Finnegas. Think better, brain._  
  
“Wait, why would he…? You just said we sighted land, right before-” She stopped, and scowled, closing her eyes. “Aw, fu- _Lovecraft._ We’ve been drifting for days, haven’t we.”  
  
“Eeeeeyup.”  
  
She covered her face. “Marvelous. _Please_ tell me I’m not the last one to wake up.”  
  
“No, Indy’s still out. Ritsuka and Mash have been up and about since yesterday, though - and Spence dodged all of it, lucky fuck.”  
  
She wished she'd had the spare energy to dramatically sit bolt upright at the mention of her fiancé, but her head and her back were both pretty insistent that she could be just as worried lying down. “Is he all right?” she demanded. “Aside from being passed out?”  
  
“He did better out of this than either of us, honestly.” Jacob waggled his bandaged fingers at her before gesturing at the subject of the conversation, not far away, his snoring barely audible over the waves on the hull. “Out like a light. Shifts occasionally in his sleep, but not much. No babbling, night terrors, or even twitching while I’ve been in here.”  
  
Ignoring a shriek of protest that shot down her neck, shoulder and elbow, Ko rolled awkwardly over to have a look at Adam (she and Toby were probably the only two people in the party who thought of him by his legal name at all, she realized belatedly).  
  
As she stared at the fluffy black hair she loved so well, falling in disarray on the pillow, she wondered, not for the first time since they’d arrived, if they had even a snowball’s chance of getting some kind of message back to their families. Indy’s parents had always been kind to her; she didn’t like the thought of what his disappearance would do to them, any more than she liked the thought of her own mum and dad spending the rest of their lives trying to figure out what had happened to her.  
  
She could accept not being able to go back herself - hell, between the suicidal ideation and her general impulsivity, she was surprised she’d lived to see thirty in the first place. Everyone else, though...  
  
The closest feeling she could compare it to, when she bothered to dwell on it, were the times before yet another move, when she’d had to purge all her belongings down to what would fit in two suitcases. And even that feeling was a shadow of this one. Back then, she’d always been able to make a list of the books and comics and games and movies she’d owned, and live in hope of the day she’d track down copies of them again.  
  
She laughed weakly, and rolled back over to face Dory, her hand still half-covering her eyes. “... y’know, when I said I wanted all of us to take a vacation together sometime, I meant like, Comic Con, or something.”  
  
Dory’s eyes narrowed melodramatically as he turned back from whatever he’d been working on to point at her, his pirate hat slightly askew on his forehead. “Yooouuuuu… this is _youuurrrr_ fault.”  
  
It might actually have been funny, if he didn’t look like a corpse.  
  
“Hardy fuckin’ har,” she drawled. “Toby tanked the eldritch mojo ‘cause of the Master-Servant bond, I’m assuming?”  
  
“Best guess, yeah.” He said, back to his normal tone, having turned back to the table and… washing bandages?  
  
“We’re gettin’ that kid a Switch when we get back,” Ko decided. “And a pony, _and_ a kitten… I’m not kidding,” she added as he started to laugh and nod. “The psychological stress may make it a bitch and a half to spam her, but she saved our sorry asses.”  
  
“Basically agreed,” was his warm response.  
  
“Poor little gaffer,” she said fretfully, remembering the girl rocking back and forth on her heels beside Toby to make her skirt swish, every now and then petting the pearls and embroidery on the v-neck collar. She’d been so excited-but-trying-not-to-be about her new dress, so obviously determined to be very grown up. Ko doubted the pretty white kaftan had survived the battle intact.  
  
… it would’ve at least been _something,_ she thought with a little frown, to remember even that much. She’d rather remember whatever fucked up shit she’d seen now than have it rush back to her at the worst possible time. _We can’t afford a setback like that._  
  
“Still,” she said aloud, “I guess it’s nice to know we have her in our back pocket if we run into anything unexpected.”  
  
Dory bobbed his head a little uncertainly, “Well… normally? Yes. Right now? Not so much. Toby was in bad shape after she went ham on Herc. They recalled them both to Chaldea.”  
  
Ko winced, but found she was too tired to feel bad about feeling relieved. A life-threatening emergency requiring teamwork was just about the worst place for Toby under the best conditions, let alone one he’d had a hand in putting them in; ‘the mana reactors’ll probably handle the power-requirements for us like they do for Ritsuka’ - in a pig’s ass, they would. At least with one of the party back in Chaldea they knew one of them had better than 50-50 odds of surviving this ordeal, and if it was the one who actually knew a damn thing about this setting? So much the better.  
  
 _... okay, slow your roll, there, kid,_ she scolded herself. _Dreaming about being Fionn does not_ make _you Fionn. You're an off again on again internet writer and office drone with no leadership experience talking out of her ass about obvious shit, and don't you forget it._  
  
She'd been caught off guard, the first night; most Fate properties had framed the dream cycle as a dramatic convenience, holding off on actually depicting its contents until after the readers or viewers were already invested in the characters. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that in practice it would start right away - Grail Wars were pretty short, and Heaven's Feel was a process by and for magi, people less personable than Toby almost to a man. Why _persuade_ a cautious Servant to tell you their true name like an adult when you can just brainjack them in your sleep? Why ask for their assessment of their Noble Phantasm when you can _watch_ it take out half an army in a single blow with your own eyes?  
  
Feel it with your own hands, sometimes.  
  
Slipping her legs over the side of the hammock and sitting up, she grunted at the sudden lightheadedness that made the throbbing in her forehead somehow worse and better at the same time, and tried not to envy her spirited-away friend for being injured enough to be worth saving.  
  
“Where’s Fionn?” she asked, yawning. “We gotta see a pirate about a grail.”  
  
As if on cue, the door of the room was kicked open, and Dory cackled as the blond busybody strode in with a bowl of stew in one hand and a pair of delicate-looking, red-tinted spectacles in the other.  
  
“Master!” he declared. “I come bearing sunglasses and sustenance!”  
  
“Fionn-san!” came Mash’s scandalized voice from the hallway, quieter and yet also much higher-pitched.  
  
“Be at ease, little darling,” he called as Furiko took the shades and slipped them on, “I’ve tended many an aching head in my time! You can rest assured, my Master is in the best hands she could be.”  
  
“I’ll cosign that,” Ko groaned as her eyes adjusted to their new, mercifully darkened view of the world. She reached for the stew and took it in both hands, blowing on it. “Servant of the year, every year. Professor Smith gets an honorable mention.”  
  
“Have to agree to disagree with you on that one, there, Ko,” Dory said with a soft chuckle, having moved from the table over towards Indy.  
  
Ko gestured at him with her spoon. “Hey, M- Saber will be in Fionn’s league when sh- he brings you a transfusion kit and a pint of plasma unprompted. Seriously, you’re from Florida, you shouldn’t be looking paler than me in this weather, that’s just disconcerting.”  
  
He grinned, and gave a mock bow. “It comes naturally.”  
  
“And the bleeding eyes along with it, no doubt,” Fionn remarked, “if the tales Spencer has told of Florida are to be believed.”  
  
“No no, see, _that_ is because of all the drugs.” He pointed at the Servant with a little grin before turning back to Indy, gently turning the man on his side and shifting the bedding materials around.  
  
“Yes,” Ko nodded, lowering the bowl of stew from her lips and clearing her throat. “You live on the edge, clearly. You straddle the line between man and beast.”  
  
The only response she got was a raspberry being blown her way.  
  
“...So. What kind of shape am I in?” she asked Fionn, sipping her stew. “How soon can we invoke Fintan Finnegas and be back on track?”  
  
The Lancer’s smile dimmed a tad. “I’d feel we were on safer ground if you’d take a little more water first, Master. It’s a miracle any of you are in any state to hold a proper conversation so soon - I shudder to think what longterm effects exposure to the outer dark may’ve had on your mind.”  
  
 _< <How do you think I feel?>>_ she grumbled. _< <I still haven’t eliminated the possibility that the outer dark is how we came to your world in the_ first _place. >>  
  
<<Well, it wouldn’t be the first time an enemy sent a woman to tempt me,>>_ Fionn quipped. _< <Though what quarrel the elder things have with me, I couldn’t say. Perhaps I’ve reached heights of heroism previously unknown, even to me!>>  
  
<<Dork.>>_  
  
“Hey, do what you have to do to hold me together,” she said aloud, shaking her head. “But I’ll remind you that the longterm effects of not getting to a damn grail include us dying very slowly, and painfully, and probably a little disgustingly toward the end. All the nursemaiding in the world isn’t going to keep me alive and sane if I don’t get some circuits soon.”  
  
“Believe you me, Master,” Fionn said grimly, pulling out his waterskin and pouring a mouthful of the contents into his left palm, “I am the very last person on this ship who needs reminding of that.”  
  
He nodded at the bowl in her hands, and she passed it to Dory with a mumbled ‘sorry’. Then she turned back, and, cupping Fionn’s hand in both of hers, she drank.  
  
As she felt the water pass her lips, she was struck with the amusing thought that at this point, thanks to the dream cycle, she actually had more memories of administering the Uisce Beatha than of receiving it.  
  
And just like that, the fog started to thin. She still had a headache, of course, but it no longer took up half of her focus just by its very presence. Her muscles had gone from seemingly braiding themselves into one enormous knot spanning her entire body to merely snarling at her every time she moved.  
  
Her Servant smiled at her, and she tried to smile back.  
  
 _Just like that._  
  
… that conversation could wait. They still had a world to save.  
  
If they could manage to save themselves first.  
  


* * *

  
 ** _Jacob_**  
  
“Yay land.”  
  
Jacob pushed the tricorner further onto his head in defiance of the sea winds that washed over the deck as the ship approached the shore, likely to beach itself since Ching Shih could just dismiss and resummon it afterwards.  
  
 _< I thought you liked the ocean.> _Mordred’s voice came over their link.  
  
 _< Correct!> _He grinned briefly but at the ocean before wincing just a bit, _< But it’d be nice to let you manifest without ‘existence becoming pain’.>  
  
<That sounds nice, yeah.>_  
  
The approaching sand was almost brilliantly yellow - not at all like most of the beaches back home. Not only because the sand was far finer, but the bits of greek architecture rubble scattered about. That and the incongruous kinds of trees and foliage - four different kinds of palms, several different kinds of ferns, and according to what little he remembered of his mother’s landscaping company, they’d all come from different parts of the country, or even the world.  
  
… what in the world were they doing? They were just being led around by the nose by Fionn’s magic, and they could be heading into a trap so he could escape. Or it could be a trap laid by Jason or such getting around them. And all of this banked on them being able to get the Grail from the local living Drake… assuming this was all real in the first place of course. The persistent thought always nibbling at the edges of his thoughts in the quiet moments–  
  
 _< Master. You’re still being weird.> _Mordred’s thoughts intruded on his own.  
  
 _< Pardon my paranoia. I’ll try to keep it manageable.>_  
  
Most of the group was up on deck by now. Toby had apparently woken up in Chaldea, though he was still bedridden, last they were aware. Tell had spotted land, and Fionn had confirmed that Francis Drake was on it.  
  
Spence was lying curled up against a crate, whinging piteously. “Hey, Indy? If you wanna just Magellan me, I’d consider it a personal favor.”  
  
Without even looking, the other man, feet dangling through the rails and off the side of the ship, flipped him off. Adam had been downing water pretty much continuously since waking up; he looked like he was nearly finished with his latest purchased waterskin.  
  
Glancing over at the last one to wake, Jacob couldn’t help but be concerned. The other man had said he’d been doing better, and the man himself had muttered something about “Rust Bus estimation” and “BLP bullshittery” when asked why he consistently was doing so much better than the rest of them… but that didn’t necessarily mean either of them believed that, or that Jacob wasn’t worried. It’d been a while since he’d seen him in person prior to this Chaldea bullshit, but…  
  
Moving across the deck as the wood and ropes creaked and groaned, Jacob stopped beside Indy and gently bumped shoulders, “Hey, how you holdin’ up?”  
  
“Like a four drink hangover,” his friend grumbled before taking a large gulp of water. His tone softened considerably as he wiped his lips with a lacy, somewhat stained handkerchief that his Servant had obviously given him. “Which, you know, small favors.”  
  
“Better than a six drink hangover.” Jacob nodded sagely. “Probably want to brace though, she’s not taking up the sails and we’ll–”  
  
That was right about the time they hit a sandbar.  
  
Ching Shih’s ship jerked forward, and Jacob stumbled from the motion, “... probably be beaching ourselves. Right.”  
  
Indy’s comment, whatever it was, devolved into sputtering as the remainder of his water flew into the other man’s face.  
  
“We’re beaching,” the ship’s captain said belatedly, her voice carrying easily over the deck.  
  
“Little more warning would’ve been better!” Jacob called back even as the ship pushed closer to the actual beach.  
  
Cu was the first down, easily clearing the distance to the shore and skipping the water entirely as Mash stayed with the loose group of Masters and Tell watched from the lookout.  
  
It took a little longer for the ship to settle and the rope to be thrown over the side. Experience had taught Jacob that the Chaldean uniforms dried out blessedly quick; and the nagging pins and needles, the burning numbness that threatened to eat away at his fingertips and edges of his face… that was a great motivator to get off the boat and get this fucking _over_ with. He was the first of the masters down the simple rope ladder, boots splashing loudly in the shallow seawater as he dropped the last few feet.  
  
Normally, he had great sea-legs, but as soothing as the gentle rocking and creaking of the ship could be, it did little for his headache and the bone deep ache in his knees. The tropical water seeping through his pants didn’t particularly help either.  
  
“Fuck,” he heard Adam grunt after the following splash, and Jacob suppressed a smile. “Cold cold cold cold cold-”  
  
“Fionn, you don’t have t-!”  
  
One flying leap and a briefly-dopplered shriek later, Ko’s Lancer was setting her on her feet on the shore, and waving, not a little smugly, at the rest of them.  
  
 _< Gotta up your game, master.> _The grin in the prince’s tone brought a smile to Jacob’s face even if he couldn’t see it. Said grin was exacerbated when Ching Shih mimicked the Lancer’s actions, carrying Spencer like a sack of potatoes. Tell and Mash followed soon after, though the Shielder had an arm wrapped around Ritsuka’s waist, for a business-class form of ServantAir.  
  
 _< Sadly, being human has its unfortunate limitations.> _Mordred was a homunculus, an artificial human. Not something Jacob had expected, but it made sense given Nasuverse shenanigans. The unpleasant surprise had been how angrily his prince reacted upon being called female, as well as their age. Or relative lack thereof. _< We’ll work on that later.>_  
  
Mordred was ten years old. Or, to quote, ‘almost eleven.’ Seriously, that was… concerning.  
  
It was while everyone else was walking up to the beach itself that the pirates came out of the underbrush, their pistols held out and several with cultasses drawn. “Woo-hoo! Women! Prey! And a ship to boot! Looks like fun!”  
  
Mash made a face. “Master. Please let me handle this.”  
  
The fight, if you could call it that, lasted less than a minute while most of the group finished getting to the beach. Though Cu did have to intercept a stray musket ball with his staff.  
  
With a thud, Mash’s shield slammed into the sand. “Next, please.”  
  
 _‘Goddamn.’_ Jacob could only blink while wringing out the hems of his pants, _‘It’s gonna take some time to get used to seeing a Servant fight.’_  
  
The last of the conscious pirates had his hands up in supplication. “Hey, gimme a break, I didn’t mean any harm… it was my instinct as a pirate…”  
  
Groveling. Not entirely surprised, but still.  
  
“Yeah?” Ko growled from behind her new shades, bracing herself against Indy, shoulder to shoulder. “Well my instinct as a woman with a headache is to tell my overprotective redneck lunatic Servant to put you out of my misery, so let’s set the evolutionary psychology aside for the moment, shall we?”  
  
“Do we have to?” Spencer asked.  
  
“Probably a good plan,” Jacob muttered, glancing at the other pirates around them, some having made literal divots in the sand like falling comets after the demiservant had finished with them. “Murdering their crew is probably not the best way to get into a Captain’s good graces.”  
  
“What a poor excuse for a pirate–!” Dr. Roman attempted to get in his own quip over the comms. But Mash apparently wasn’t in the mood.  
  
Standing over the groveling pirate and with a hand on her hip, the Shielder stared imperiously down on the eyepatched man. “We are here to speak with Captain Francis Drake.”  
  
“Oh…” the man blinked, and a change came over his smile, “Ohhh-! You want to talk to the Boss!” Pushing himself up and keeping an eye on the massive shield, the man grinned, “Heh heh heh.”  
  
In the corner of his eye, Jacob could see Adam facepalm.  
  
“Why the swagger all of the sudden?” Roman muttered.  
  
“Hrm... perhaps it’s a desperate attempt to seem more ‘pirate-like’?” da Vinci suggested.  
  
“Right,” Jacob tried to keep on track, pinching the bridge of his nose before looking at the man with the eyepatch, “Who are you?”  
  
“Bombe Merriweather!” He puffed out his chest, reminding him only so much of a rooster or dog whose name had been called, “Loyal crewman to the Captain that struck down the Spanish Armada!”  
  
“I seem to recall the storm did most of the work,” Ko muttered under her breath, and Indy nudged her in the ribs.  
  
“Yer damn right I did!” Bombe responded.  
  
Jacob couldn’t help but snort. Okay, that was good. “There’s other work though,” he nodded at the mass of unconscious or otherwise incapacitated men on the beach, “We can’t just leave them on the beach.”  
  
“Do we have rope?” Indy asked.  
  
“I’ll take care of it,” Ching Shih said.  
  
Indy’s eyes darted around the beach. “But–”  
  
“Hey,” Spencer said, “she said she’d take care of it, so don’t worry about it.”  
  
“Please remember that we’d rather _not_ kill them,” Jacob chided gently.  
  
“Dory, I distinctly remember telling you _not to worry about it._ We’re not going to kill them. We need them,” Spencer said with far more cheer than he’d had since they’d got here. “Part of the ship, part of the crew.”  
  
Bombe had a confused look on his face even as Jacob pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. Any concerns the man with the red bandana might have brought up disappeared in a little surprised yelp when the flagship of the Red Flag Fleet, as well as the fallen pirates, dissolved into a mass of golden particles and faded into the wind, like motes of dust leaving a sunbeam.  
  
Spencer shuddered, his frame relaxing as he released the tension in his shoulders. With a sigh, he managed to mumble, “Existence is no longer pain.”  
  
Even with the… concerning aspects of ‘absorbing’ people like that aside… _... that’s still weird. I was on that thing like a minute ago._  
  
Pushing aside potential concerns and nagging worries in the back of his mind about Ching Shi, or the souls of those they were interacting with, he looked back to the red bandana’d man. “Regardless… Bombe, you’re going to lead us to Drake and make an introduction. We find ourselves in need of your captain’s… assistance.”  
  


* * *

  
The trees of the forest were surprisingly straight given the rocky and uneven terrain. They reminded Jacob of areas in the mountains in Pennsylvania, moss and lichens covering rocks, sparse grasses along the ground… trees were wrong, and it felt weird to have this sort of environment when he could still smell the salt in the air.  
  
“...How are we even in a temperate forest,” Indy was muttering to himself, seemingly determined to step on every stray stone and stumble over each protruding route on their path. “We were in the Caribbean-Mediterranean sea with… palm trees and… ruined columns….”  
  
“Singularities are strange,” Ritsuka offered, helping him over a moderately difficult boulder. “Not only time, but space itself is warped - I once walked from Rome to London in under a week.”  
  
“... uh…” Jacob raised a hand.  
  
“Please, no further questions,” the youngest of them said tiredly. “I really prefer to think about Septem as little as possible.”  
  
“It wasn’t that bad, Sempai,” Mash consoled. “Perhaps her singing was not the best, but Nero-san cared deeply for her people. Plus, her sense of interior design _was_ quite fetching. Umu!”  
  
Spencer perked up at the last syllable. “Uwu?”  
  
“No, there was an ‘m’ sound in the middle of it…”  
  
Spencer smiled serenely and nodded. “That’s what I said. Uwu.”  
  
“No,” Mash furrowed her brow. “It was ‘Umu’!”  
  
“Uwu!”  
  
“U-”  
  
“-Mashu,” Ritsuka cut in, his frustration accenting how he said the girl’s name. “Do you know anything about this ‘Francis Drake?’”  
  
“... Francis Drake,” Mash began with a serious nod, clearly happy to teach her senpai. “One of the great heroes that pioneered this world. As we are in the midst of the Age of Exploration, it is likely that Bennett-san is correct and it is the real Drake, and a living being. The first voyager in history to sail around the globe and live to tell the tale.”  
  
Jacob thought back to the fuzzy memories he had about Fate’s version of Francis Drake. He was pretty sure he’d seen _something_ for the character before. They were definitely canonical. And, given Nasuverse, probably a chick, but what was their ‘Thing’ again? He’d glazed over a lot of Mash’s explanation while wracking his brain.  
  
“...the “Hero who brought down the sun.” She finished, casually hopping up several feet to bypass a particularly large rock, “The prosperity of the British Empire wouldn’t be possible without Captain Drake.”  
  
Bombe preened at the flattery Mash was heaping on his leader. Jacob ducked under a hanging branch, one hand on his incredibly extra tricorn to make sure it didn’t get knocked off.  
  
“Though Drake was officially sanctioned by the state as a privateer, a pirate is still a pirate. Judging from the behavior of pirates we’ve met so far, odds are high that he’s a good-for-nothing thug.”  
  
And just like that, Bombe’s face fell right back down.  
  
“Well damn, Mash,” Ko said, amused, “tell us how you really feel.”  
  
Mash, the poor sheltered soul, took her at her word. “Then he is most likely a gluttonous giant, a nefarious character able to grab a barrel in one hand and chug its entire contents!”  
  
Mash Kyrielight: accidentally savage as fuck.  
  
“It is quite disturbing,” she concluded, “but there is no doubt he is a key person in this era; we must somehow get the help of Francis Drake.”  
  
“Um,” Jacob scratched his beard, able to keep his smile subdued with a bit of effort as he tried to temper her expectations. “Mash? Don’t really count on the genders of historical figures. You’ve met Nero. And from what I know, it happens more often than not.”  
  
As if to bolster his claims, the radiant blue-white floof emerged from underneath Ritsuka’s shirt, his fluffy ears standing straight up. “Fou!”  
  
Bombe grinned at the little, fluffy squirrel-sized creature, an almost lustful expression stretched across his face. “Oh my, what is this _adorable_ little creature? It looks delicious.”  
  
“Eat him and I’ll beat you till you cry.” Ritsuka’s tone was quiet and filled with promise.  
  
“Clear as day, boss!” Bombe chirruped.  
  
Ching Shih snorted. “Too much bootlicking,” she muttered, eyeing their guide up and down like a cut of meat. “This man has no spirit to him.”  
  
“...He probably isn’t a man, technically speaking,” Mash admitted, seeming happy to have a topic change from the genders of historical figures. “If this is similar to the situation in Septem, then he is probably closer to a construct than an actual person, especially if his actual self was not here in proper human history, or if he is a fill-in from the ‘unlimited pirates’. Otherwise, Rider-san couldn’t have, ano… assimilated them?”  
  
“Hey! Who are you calling a construct?”  
  
“Shut up construct, or it’s a whipping,” Spence’s own personal pirate captain ordered.  
  
“Aye, aye, captain!”  
  
Construct or not, Bombe’s fearful reaction was entirely understandable. Ching Shih’s ability was existentially… concerning.  
  
“Sempai,” Mash urged, suddenly, picking up her pace. “We need to press onward. We...” she trailed off for a moment, obviously communicating with her Master telepathically. “... we should reduce the chances of monsters intercepting us in transit.”  
  
Mash was a terrible liar - that hadn’t been what she had been about to say. Nonetheless, she had a point.  
  
The forest grew louder as they continued onwards in silence.  
  
About twenty minutes later, they finally made it.  
  
The encampment was pretty basic, little more than a clearing with a really basic fence of stakes and a number of tents set up in a rough shape in the outlined clearing. Against the ocean they could see a single galleon, its sails put up and likely anchored.  
  
As Chaldea’s forces approached, Bombe called, “Boss, boss! We’ve got enem–” he hesitated a moment as the group collectively shot him a glare. “Er, guests, I mean! They said they want to speak with you, boss!”  
  
“The hell?” The sound of the woman’s harsh voice came over the soft din of the encampment. Even as some pirates started to gather at the edges, carrying pistols, cutlasses, and similar, the din of the group meant that the next words were lost to Jacob before she called out, “Guests? Are they pirates?”  
  
“Um,” Bombe glanced at the group, “I don’t think so! Most of ‘em at least. They’re classier than us, and a bit more violent!”  
  
“... a bit?” Jacob and Mash both asked softly under their breaths, with vastly different tones.  
  
“The hell is that?” Once more the woman’s voice called out, over the now quieted noises of the camp. “What are they then? Government? Army? More pirates?”  
  
“Uh…” Bombe glanced over us again, “I don’t think they’re any of those!”  
  
“We’re time tourists,” Ko said, waggling her eyebrows. “Ain’tcha ever read Borgel?”  
  
“Guys,” Spencer’s voice lowered conspiratorially. “You all have literally signed on as crew of a pirate ship under a pirate captain - you are _absolutely_ pirates. Not me, though,” he added. “Cargo can't commit piracy.”  
  
There was something in the same rough voice that Jacob couldn’t hear properly before she called out, “Fine, bring ‘em in!”  
  
The small cluster of pirates that had gathered with the rifles and pistols glanced among themselves before stepping aside, allowing Chaldea’s group to head into the roughly encircled set up of tents and tables. They were led by Bombe past the slowly gathering pirates. Many of them were stereotypical in some way or other, such as eyepatches or peg legs or hook hands…  
  
Walking forward with a cluster of the pirates behind her, others still working on things or eating, was the (wo)man of the hour, without question.  
  
Vibrant and full-bodied pink hair that reached to the small of her back, a brilliant red coat trimmed with gold that failed to button up entirely, full lips, a sharp scar cutting across her face, and a flagon in hand. Her vest accentuated the trim stomach, and the stark wood of several musket butts hung against the surprisingly stark white of her breeches.  
  
“Well now, you certainly brought me some strange ones, Bombe.”  
  
This ignored the fact that her coat _failed_ to button up for two very… distracting reasons. But while she was at least half a head shorter than most of the Masters of Chaldea, she towered over them all by dint of sheer swagger and presence.  
  
“...they’ve got their good points,” Bombe said with a bit of eagerness as the red-bandana’d pirate approached his captain, leaving the group a slight distance behind. “Not only did they save our lives, but they’re excited to meet their idol captain.”  
  
That was a very… _generous_ way to characterize Mash’s little monologue.  
  
He heard a very quiet tsk exit Ko’s mouth, but whatever she muttered afterward was drowned out by the bombshell explorer’s next words.  
  
“Idol?” Drake snorted, disbelief clear on her face, “I’m their idol? Really?”  
  
“Yeah!” He nodded his head vigorously, “They’ve been sayin’ how great you are, how Drake can blast the Spanish Armada in an instant! That Drake’s a giant over 3 meters tall who downs rum by the barrel! They’re really excited.”  
  
“Whaaat?” Francis Drake nearly dropped her flagon. “What’s up with that? I haven’t committed such sins yet!”  
  
A little grin started to appear on Jacob’s face as he repeated quietly, “Yet?”  
  
It was particularly funny coming from the smaller woman, who somehow managed to still have an astonishingly curvy figure, the vest accentuating the flare of her hips, and the lack of undershirt meaning her significant cleavage was emphasized as well by the outfit. None of her body language was what you might expect of a woman with that figure or face surrounded by pirates. She was the center of attention, this was the natural state of the world; she knew it, and was entirely at ease with it.  
  
At this, the only Fate virgin in the group could no longer contain himself. “How?” Indy spluttered loudly, waving his hands in a way obviously meant to indicate he was talking about Drake without actually pointing directly at her cleavage. “What, but… _how?_ How though?”  
  
Poor guy. Things had apparently gotten to the point where his stutter had resurfaced. Jacob was happy he hadn’t mentioned Mordred’s name; that was gonna be a conversation and a half.  
  
Mash, it seemed, was in agreement with Indy. “... uh, senpai,” she murmured, eyes wide, cheeks slightly pink with embarrassment. “I’m so stunned I can’t speak.”  
  
“But-I-Drake-wa-”  
  
Indy’s fiancée wrapped an arm around his shoulder, murmuring something that sounded suspiciously like, “Waifu simulator, dear.”  
  
“Who knew she was a woman!” Ritsuka was shockingly able to keep his exclamation somewhat quiet.  
  
“I _did_ warn you,” Jacob muttered, trying to get the smile off of his face as Drake stepped forward, one hand resting casually over the butt of her pistol, the other holding a mug of something almost certainly alcoholic.  
  
“Stand aside, Bombe. I’ll do the talking. So-” She froze mid sentence, brilliant blue eyes locking onto Jacob and narrowing. “... why do you have my hat?”  
  
“Ahhh… yes.” Stalling briefly as his brain caught up with the intense look from an intense woman, Jacob nodded. “Well, we killed the guy that had it before.” He took it off of his head and twirled it between his hands as he approached, holding out the elaborate tricorner to the pirate captain with a small smile, a half step away. “I apologize, we didn’t realize it was yours.”  
  
Drake studied the Chaldean master for a moment before draining her mug in two quick, massive gulps, her head tilted back and her eyes closed. A few errant trickles of slightly foamy liquid trailed down her chin before she swiped her sleeve across her mouth to leave it clean, and left Jacob very aware that the pink to her lips was not lipstick. Casually tossing her mug aside, she then took her hand from the butt of her pistol and snatched the hat from Jacob’s grip.  
  
“Saved me the trouble of tracking him down to steal it back.” She pointed at his chest with the hat before her eyes swept the group. “Now who are you?”  
  
Their Shielder stepped forward and gave a little bow, “You must be Francis Drake. My name is Mash Kyrielight. We’re part of the Chaldea Security Organization.”  
  
“Chaldea?” A confused and disbelieving look crossed the pirate captain’s face, “What do the ‘stargazers’ want with us? Are they here to sell us new maps of constellations?”  
  
 _<... ah, so that’s what Chaldea means. Kickass, both to learn and her for knowing it.>  
  
<You didn’t know that, Master?> _Mordred’s voice came through their connection.  
  
 _< No I did not. A linguist I am not.>_  
  
It was, oddly enough, Smith who stepped forward next - from the look of faint concentration on Adam’s face, the Caster was being used as a relay.  
  
“Good day to you, Captain,” he began. “We were hoping in fact hoping to request your assistance on a matter of some urgency-”  
  
“Spare me the bullshit, jocky, it’s just a pain in the ass.” Drake gave a slight twitch in the Servant’s direction, and the man almost immediately flinched back. Adam winced at that particular show of weakness. “What does Chaldea want with me?”  
  
Mordred manifested in a flash of gold, stepping forward even as her-no, _his_ master cringed. “The world’s gone screwy,” the prince of Camelot stated, green eyes raking across Drake and her assembled followers. “We’re here to fix it. Your Grail can make that happen.”  
  
“Oh yeah, ‘screwy’?”  
  
The fully armored Saber snorted, gesturing out at the ocean with a gauntlet. “What else do you want to call everything being pirates and islands without any towns to raid?”  
  
“Ah, that shit, yeah,” Drake half sighed. “Can’t really ignore the ocean, after all. You’re right. It’s been pretty strange.”  
  
Mash brightened, “Yes, we can explain why-”  
  
Drake continued as if she hadn’t stopped, voice rising as she spoke, “-but when I say ‘strange’, I don’t mean it as a bad thing. There’s no other world that’s as fun as this one!” Turning to her crew she held up her mug and called out, “ Isn’t that right, you scumbags?!”  
  
A cheer came up from the assembled pirates, guns and sabers raised, “Aye!” “You’re the best boss!” “Yes!” “Hear hear to never-ending rum!”  
  
Cu Chulainn snorted. “She makes a compelling case, if you’re a moron,” he muttered idly to Ritsuka.  
  
“I’ve never even had any rum,” Ritsuka mused. “It can’t be that good, can it?”  
  
There was a hungry smile on her face as the captain turned back to Chaldea’s forces, “You’re telling us to give up something that’s ours.” She put the hat Jacob had given her - her hat - atop her head, and straightened it with a flourish. “And Bombe was saying you _weren’t_ pirates. I’d tell you to come and take it, if you’re man enough--”  
  
“We _can_ go that route, if you insist.” Jacob pressed a hand hard against his chest in preparation as he _growled_. “ _Saber_.”  
  
With metallic clanking, Saber’s helmet fell away, revealing a bloodthirsty grin. In the same motion, their weapon slammed into the ground, bursts of red lightning erupting up around the Servant. The sharp, stabbing _ache_ in Jacob’s chest was anticipated, and he gritted his teeth to stifle his physical reaction, hoping the matching grin on his own face would mask the gouging agony.  
  
At Mordred’s side, Cu’s staff blazed with fire, while Tell and Mash readied their own weapons. Fionn didn’t move from his post just behind Ko, but she was humming a cheerful tune that somehow sounded ominous even _before_ Jacob recognized it from the hospital scene in Kill Bill.  
  
Francis Drake’s only response was to _chuckle_ , as her entire gang’s hands began to reach for their sheathed armaments. “Oh, I’m _more_ than game for that.”  
  
Despite the pain, despite the fear, despite gritting his teeth together hard enough that his jaw creaked, he was still kind of excited. The back of his hand felt like it sizzled as the Command Seals reacted to his intent, ready to top off Mordred even as he prepared to bolt out of the instant-death-radius of a Servant fight.  
  
“Come now,” Smith broke into the conversation with a vigorous wave of his walking stick, and the bloody storm dancing around Saber faded slightly as the Caster continued, “Let us reason together. Is there not any way we can settle this without needless bloodshed? We are all civilized men- er, _people_ , that is- here.”  
  
“Yeah?” The pirate captain snorted, even as she lowered the twin pistols Jacob hadn’t even noticed she’d drawn. “And what would _you_ suggest, Reverend?”  
  
 _< Oh come on!> _Mordred’s voice rang out in Jacob’s head.  
  
 _< Mordred, hun, it sounds fun>_ The sharp relief couldn’t fully ease the tension in his jaw, but Drake’s willingness to entertain alternatives meant his heart didn’t feel like going to batter its way through his sternum, _< But it could literally kill me.>_  
  
The Saber was quiet for another whole beat, _<... yeah yeah, spoilsport.>  
  
<Not saying it doesn’t sound fun…> _Jacob admitted, unable to resist another glance over of the diminutive captain.  
  
“Ah, well, a contest of- um, a vigorous debate regarding- no….” Smith appeared very keenly aware that every eye was now fixed on him. “What about-”  
  
“Mahjong,” Ching Shih said, having manifested once more, a rictus smile on her face.  
  
“I don’t know Mahjong,” Spencer interjected, “but I could explain how to play Pai Gow in about… five minutes, tops.”  
  
“Beer pong,” Indy broke in. “H-how about beer pong?”  
  
The pirates glanced amongst themselves briefly before Bombe was the one to bite the metaphorical bullet and ask, “... beer pong?”  
  
“W-W-We need 18 mugs and a-a, uh, musket ball-”  
  
“ _Better_ idea.” Drake interrupted, foot stomping down on a mug and crushing it, a grin like a vicious dragon finding an unclaimed hoard on her face. “Simpler too. _Drinking_ contest.”  
  
“...Unsubscribe,” Spence muttered.


End file.
